


The Scythe's Song

by hallowedmaiden



Series: The Scythe's Song [2]
Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Flashbacks, Fluff and Smut, Fountain of Youth, Immortality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2018-12-01 04:31:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 200,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11478651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hallowedmaiden/pseuds/hallowedmaiden
Summary: Immortality is a gift, one that two lives have enjoyed for almost three centuries. But even an immortal life can experience darkness. Jack Sparrow and Elizabeth Swann have touched it, survived it, but does their reaper still lay in wait to claim them?Sparrabeth, Future AU (Fountain of Youth fic), disregards OST and DMTNT, disregards Willabeth marriage. Previously titled Rivalry. Jack is 30, Lizzie is 25 (see inside for my take on the Fountain). Contains plenty of flashbacks to a wide span of time periods, is not a purely modern fic.





	1. A Meeting in Mumbai

**Author's Note:**

> IMPORTANT UPDATE: 
> 
> (I am putting this at the top because I don't want it to be missed.)
> 
> Jack and Lizzie both now have roleplay Twitter accounts. If you have a Twitter account, you can follow them and interact with them. They will talk about anything that has happened in the story up to the latest update, but will not give away any spoilers directly. Just think how much fun you could have actually talking to them!
> 
> Jack's Twitter Handle: @rex_pirata  
> Lizzie's Twitter Handle: @silkandshadow
> 
> Go follow them!
> 
>  
> 
> Hello readers! Welcome to my Sparrabeth AU! This is going to be a long-fic, probably coming to an end around 250k+ words. I feel confident that I will finish it by March at the latest. I am making an effort to incorporate their past into this instead of making it a purely modern fic. So, there are plenty of flashbacks to various time periods.
> 
> But the main story takes place in 2017. Jack and Lizzie drank from the Fountain about two years after AWE, in a scenario where Will left her to choose who she wanted. So as far as their age, Lizzie is 25, and Jack is 30 physically. My logic with the Fountain is that it brings the drinker's body to their prime physical state. So Lizzie stayed mostly the same, while Jack got wound back a couple of years. 
> 
> This story does contain plenty of smut, so if you are uncomfortable with situations of that nature, read at your own risk.
> 
> This story will also contain some very light cross-overs, but they will be kept vague. 
> 
> I hope everyone who reads enjoys, and I would be tickled to hear your thoughts! Reviews keep me going! Seriously, I check my email about every 10 minutes for new comments, and I respond to everyone! :)
> 
> Author's Note: I have created a Tumblr for this story, where I will be roleplaying as Jack and Lizzie. You can go on there and ask them questions or say whatever to them. I won't give away story spoilers from whichever point I am in the story on, but I can answer any questions about their history or about the story so far! :)
> 
> https://shadowandsilk.tumblr.com/
> 
> I have also created a website for this story:
> 
> https://egyptgypsie.wixsite.com/thescythessong
> 
> I have also created an email specific to this story in case anyone wanted to send me questions or comments there:
> 
> scythessong@gmail.com
> 
> Here is a pic of how I see Lizzie in this story:
> 
>   [](http://imgur.com/1nrSA91)  
> 
> 
> And here is a tentative picture of Jack. I doubt I will ever be satisfied with any image rep. of him in this story, but this gets pretty close:
> 
>  [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/157712394@N02/36436476661/in/dateposted-public/)  
> 
> 
> Update 3/3/18 - Chapter 28 is going to take a little longer to get out. I need to do a lot of planning and working out plot kinks before I dig into it. But don't worry! It will be up soon! :)

September 7th, Monday Evening, 6:30 PM

* * *

 It would have been dangerous to be standing out in the middle of a large crowd like this, where there could be a spy watching her behind the warm eyes of the Mumbai citizens, carrying their baskets of fruit, and peddling off-brand electronics, but she was used to the chaos that a place like this bred. It was exciting, rushing through her blood, the same way that standing in the path of a tornado might be exciting, or running from a pack of rabid dogs.

The mundane lives of those around her did nothing to entertain her, and she would loathe adopting their day in and day out of providing for their families or listening to whatever drivel was airing on the telly that day. Not that she could ever physically live that kind of life; her mind wouldn't allow it. Her mind barely allowed her to do this job the way it bombarded her with sensory information and connections to things she did, saw, or thought about a day, a week, a year ago.

She saw  _everything_ , and some might say that it was more of a curse than a gift, but damn it if it didn't make her one of the best thieves working. More  _sensitive_  people liked to call her an 'acquirer of high-grade merchandise' or a 'professional', but she was never around sensitive people enough to be bothered by their poor language choices.

People, generally rich old men that owned nice cars and nice houses, would hand her a wad of cash, upwards of five grand, and instructions for what she was to steal. Six years ago, when she had been captured for all of five hours in the depressing city of Berlin, the detective had read off a list of everything that had been credited to her. The list was  _long,_ two pages, and she had happily denied every charge of theft that they had accused her of, even though every damn thing on there had been stolen by her.

A bag of compromising photos depicting someone in royalty had been plucked from the briefcase of a government official while he was standing at the curb waiting for a limo, a rare painting had been flawlessly relocated one evening in Paris, a katana had been carried out of a Japanese museum in broad daylight, and a rare,  _very rare_  codex was stolen from a villa in...well, that one didn't matter, because she had kept it for herself anyway. That employer wasn't pleased with the new arrangement, but she had... _convinced_ him otherwise.

Sometimes, she found something that she just  _wanted_. Her most recent acquisition was a piece that she had been seeking for quite some time, (65 years) but had always been thwarted by an unknown party. A small ring with a jade stone, and a dragon wrapped around it. It had belonged to someone of historical importance, though her few close friends had never gotten her to tell them  _who_ it was. She liked it so much that she currently wore it on her pointer finger, and had done so since she had gotten it.

The city of Mumbai was terrifying to anyone who didn't know their way around large cities. They were grids, simply put, made up of different sectors and different levels of risk.  _Mumbai_  was on the fringe of even scaring her sometimes, if only for the constant violence that would ebb and flow around the markets and slums. Gunfire was a common occurrence here, one so common that it was treated the same way as a car horn, just another annoyance.

She was also often accused of being an adrenaline junkie, but she didn't think that risking her life for trinkets and jewelry quite toed  _that_ line. That title would be far more apt to describe her when she was stealing her other favorite thing: cars.

Most women liked to ride in the passenger seats of cars, while their rich husbands drove them around shopping, or to lavish parties, but _she_ generallywouldn't let a man drive her around if he had a gun pointed at her head. Especially the car that she had fought tooth and nail for in a dusty industrial park two months ago.

A matte silver blown Plymouth Roadrunner with 670 horsepower, and a white leather interior. It was a muscle car truly fit for a  _king_. Not that she was one anymore, but the title still made her smile every now and then, along with the man that had given it to her so long ago. Once she had managed to drive it out of the park, unscratched thankfully, it had joined her collection.

Inhaling, she let the pungent mixture of ginger, chili powder, and turmeric prickle at the inside of her nose. There was the always constant stench of gasoline, the haze of cigarette smoke, the greasiness of the deep fryers sizzling away in the side-of-the-street food shops, and the absolute aroma of menace that hung on everything, on her, on the people, on the buildings, and in the air.

"Excuse me, miss?"

She spun around to see a little old man trying to sell her mirrors and caught her reflection in one of them. Her skin was a light tan, a caramel hue that glowed in the sunlight. She wore dark black on her eyes, but her face was otherwise free of makeup. Her honey-colored hair hung in tousled waves to the middle of her back.

"Miss?"

Opening her mouth to give him a polite 'no thank you', her phone rang, making her sigh in relief. She gave the man a just-a-moment gesture and then blended into the crowd as she answered into the receiver with a posh British accent.

"Hello?"

Of all the people that it could have been, the woman that answered on the other end picked her mood up  _just_ a little bit.

"Hey Liz, so made any progress?"

_No,_ she hadn't made any progress, because Mumbai was like a fucking maze, and the thing she was here for was very small, and very easy to hide.

"Not yet, Ringa. I'll find it."

Liz rolled her eyes when the other woman made a snickering noise.

"You find everything, niña tonta, but this might be the one that slips away."

_Over her dead body_.

"We'll see."

Just as she was about to hang up, Ringa shouted a  _hang on_ at her.

"...Yes?"

"Did you ever figure out who tried breaking into your car garage?"

Oh. That.

_That_ had happened three weeks ago, actually. It had been around midnight, and she was just about to relax into her black suede recliner when the alarm to the garage nearly made her throw her glass of Merlot in shock. She had grabbed her .45,  _sprinting_ down the stairs with it, through the hallways, arriving to find exactly nothing wrong. At first, she had thought that a circuit had been tripped, because there was nothing missing  _or_  damaged that she could find.

She had inspected every car, gone over each one with a fine-toothed comb, growing more and more frustrated and confused, until  _finally_ , she found something out of place.

But it wasn't that something was missing, it was that something had been  _added_. A small bead, just a bit larger than a jellybean, had been sitting on the seat of her Roadrunner, innocuously. Mustard yellow, transparent, and completely irritating.

After that, it had rested on the nightstand next to her bed every night, taunting her, reminding her that  _someone_ had been in her damn garage and that  _someone_ had no other goal in mind but to drive her insane.

Not only because of the bead, but because of the note that had been left with it. She wasn't sure which one she spent more time studying.

' _Number ?/?_

_Haha. Good luck with the rest.'_

It could mean that whoever had given her the bead knew what she was collecting, but then the bead was still unexplained. She had so many theories, too many, probably.

"No, Ringa, I haven't figured it out yet, but when I do, you'll be the first to know."

"No problem Liz," she replied, laughing. " _Adios_."

The woman hung up, only to send a text immediately after, a common practice for Ringa really.

' _Be careful, there may be another interested party.'_

Liz was tempted to call back and ask her exactly  _what the fuck_ she meant by that because there was no way that she had been tailed here, and she had made  _damn_ sure that no one else was  _already_ here. As least, she thought.

_Dammit_. It was going to be hard enough to locate her current object of interest, but even harder to keep it out of the hands of other  _interested_ parties. Scrolling through the plethora of images on her Galaxy phone, she arrived at the  _only_  photo she had of the damn thing, and it was a shitty photo at that.

It was worn down, quite a bit actually, the black wood scratched and beaten in too many places, and the string attached to it was frayed to the point where it was in danger of just falling off. But she  _wanted_ it, wanted it so damn bad that she would  _kill_ for it. It was the only piece that she was missing, after she had acquired the jade ring.  _Nothing_ would stop her from getting it.

Just then her phone buzzed again.

It was a text from an unknown number.

' _Looking to complete a collection? Head on down to the InterContinental Hotel now to claim this one time offer before it's gone.'_

The InterContinental? That was only about eleven minutes by bus from the Zaveri Bazaar, the area she was currently trying to inconspicuously walk around in. But she wasn't stupid.

' _Who are you?'_ she sent back.

It took a good thirty seconds before the mystery texter responded.

' _Time is running out! Elizabeth Swann, you are the lucky winner! Come and claim your prize!'_

She was tempted to roll her eyes, and then a half a second later she wondered exactly how in the seven layers of  _fuck_ this person knew her full name.  _No one_  knew her full name.

' _Fuck you.'_ she smashed out on the screen, and then nearly launched her phone through the air at the reply she got.

' _Haha, I'm not going to be generous for long, so really, claim it or lose it.'_

She boarded the next bus that ran through, wondering just what kind of shitty trap she was walking into.

The InterContinental was a handsome blue building, stretching up tall like a glittering mass of mirrors. The doors reflected the darkening city around her as she walked through them.

Her phone buzzed.

' _Glad you decided to brave it. I promise I don't plan to jump you or anything.'_

' _Not that you would have a hope of touching me anyway.'_

' _Too confident. Eventually, there has to be someone as good as you.'_

' _There is no one as good as me.'_

' _Well, I found your little trinket before you did, so wouldn't that qualify me?'_

She stared at her phone screen for a second, contemplating.

' _I doubt that you even know the significance of what you have.'_

' _Hahaha, who do you think left that yellow bead on the seat of that gorgeous car of yours?'_

She froze, scrolling back up to the first text they had sent her.

' _Looking to complete a collection?'_

' _Good luck finding the rest.'_

A text message and a note, both written by the same person. The same  _asshole_.

' _Who are you?'_ she sent again, fuming.

' _An interested party. Come up to Room 64, third floor. The desk clerk has already been notified.'_

' _Why should I trust you?'_

' _You shouldn't. But you're going to because that is how badly you want this compass.'_

She stopped at the desk, waiting for the woman to finish her phone call.

"Hello, I-"

"Elizabeth, yes, he said to just give you the room card, here you go," she said in a thick Indian accent.

Taking the card, she rose an eyebrow at the woman, trying to see if there was anything lying beneath the rather easy-to-put-on hotel clerk facade. Finding nothing, she turned and headed for the lift. Stepping in, she punched the button for the third floor and listened to the whirring of the mechanisms as she went up.

When the doors opened, she exited but didn't continue down towards the hotel room.

' _Send me a picture of the compass.'_

' _Paranoid_   _are we?'_

" _I'm just not stupid.'_

' _Fine, fine, here.'_

The next message was indeed a photo of the black wooden compass, and it was laying in an outstretched hand. She inspected the rest of the picture for anything nefarious and found nothing.

' _I already told you, I'm not a threat to you.'_

' _I don't believe you. I don't even know who you are.'_

' _Yes, you do.'_

' _All I know about you is that you broke into my garage.'_

' _But you do know who I am, darling.'_

' _Darling? Eat shit.'_

" _Cheeky. No thanks though.'_

' _Give me more assurance.'_

This banter they were having seemed vaguely familiar, but she chalked it up to temporary deja vu.

' _Sorry, can't do that. It would ruin the surprise.'_

' _Surprise? What the fuck are you talking about?'_

' _Such foul language. Room 64, come and find out.'_

The room was at the end of the hall. She turned on her heel and strode towards the door, stopping in front of it.

' _I can hear you out there. Stop being a wuss. I don't bite.'_

' _A wuss? In my...our? line of work, there is no such thing as being too cautious.'_

' _Touche. You're still being a wuss.'_

' _Fuck off.'_

' _Lizzie, Lizzie, you are going to feel bad for being so rude to me.'_

The card reader seemed far more dangerous than it actually was when she slid the plastic key through it. It beeped and turned green, allowing her entry.

A cold draft of air hit her in the face when she stepped through, and she blinked a few times to get used to the dim lighting of the room. Her hand hovered next to her pocket knife, though she felt a strange sort of safety in here.

' _No need for the knife, love. I would take it from you before you could cut me with it anyways.'_

Love? What in the fuck?

"We are in the same room now. I think we can do away with the texting."

She got no answer. Looking around the space, she saw a couch and a flat screen TV to the left, and a kitchen to the right. Stepping around the counter, she noticed a wine glass and a bottle of Merlot sitting there.

' _Isn't this more fun though? Go ahead, the wine is for you. I'll be out in a second.'_

' _Are you sure it isn't poisoned?'_

' _Well, if it is, call an ambulance, because I just drank a glass a little bit ago.'_

Smirking involuntarily, she poured just a little bit into the glass and started sipping on it, keeping her awareness on high alert.

' _It's good.'_

' _Indeed.'_

' _So are you actually in the hotel room, or is this some kind of trick to get me in here?'_

' _I sleep on the roof. They gave me special accommodations.'_

' _Right.'_

' _I said I would be out in a second. Can't be looking anything but my best for you, darling.'_

' _Oh, is this a date now?'_

' _Not sure you tell dates to 'fuck off' before you even meet them, so no, I wouldn't call this a date.'_

' _You said I knew who you were already.'_

' _You do. Surprised you haven't figured me out yet.'_

' _Don't have much to go off of. A yellow bead, our evident mutual liking for Merlot, and the fact that we both want the compass.'_

' _I never said anything about wanting it.'_

' _So…'_

' _There were more than two interested parties looking for it. I wanted to make sure you got it.'_

' _I didn't need help.'_

' _Lizzie, you were running around Mumbai for two days struggling, you needed help.'_

' _What's with the Lizzie shit'?_

' _That's your name isn't it?'_

' _Not to you.'_

' _Right.'_

Sensing that they were done texting her, she slid her phone onto the counter, and waited, seating herself on the barstool. The hotel room smelled familiar, like patchouli and smoke, with a hint of spice.

Finally, the bathroom door opened, and her heart rate accelerated. On impulse she turned around to look at the...man, she discovered. He was turned away from her, leaning over the briefcase that was sitting on the small coffee table next to the couch.

A handsome casual suit, charcoal colored, adorned his frame, and he had nearly black hair that ran to his upper back in soft waves. His cologne slithered through the air.

_Drakkar Noir,_ nice. Now he just needed to turn around. She watched him extract something from the case.

The compass. It looked exactly how she remembered it, with just a little bit more wear and tear.

"Are you going to tell me how you got it?"

He didn't respond to her, answering the phone that was ringing in his pocket instead, speaking with an American accent.

"Hello? Yeah, don't worry about it."

"65 grand, that's right. Put it in the car. Don't let anyone see you."

"The silver car, damn, pay attention next time."

"...Fine, fucking fine, bye."

He stalked off down the hallway again, making her anticipation climb to near unbearable levels. His voice sounded familiar too, rich and deep. But something seemed off about it like it didn't quite match up.

When he returned, his face still hidden by the shadows of the room, he was loading a Beretta M9, tucking it into his trousers, and then covering it with his suit jacket.

"This mystery of your identity is r-"

Then he stepped into the light, and her heart nearly stopped.

She never thought...never thought she would see him again...had half a mind to touch her chest to feel her heart to see if it was still beating because surely this couldn't be real, he wasn't standing in front of her, he  _couldn't be real_...because she had convinced herself that he had never been more than a figment of her imagination...she had to do that in order to survive...to keep going...but now sure as the carpet under her feet, the blood in her veins, on fire as it was, and the sky above her, he was here again. Her arm twitched as though it meant to reach out and touch him, to confirm to her squirming and writhing thoughts that finally after all these years, forty-four of them, after all the longing and wishing and sweet torture of imagining where he was and what he was doing and when he was going to come back to her...but she didn't, stayed completely stationary, only capable of staring at him. 

Then...

_Oh my god._

The yellow bead. The goddamn fucking yellow bead. This...this  _fucker_ had broken into her garage to give her a damn bead that…

It used to be tied into his hair. And he had the fucking compass because it was his in the first place. She would never forget the curve of his lips, or the warmth, the _sparkle_ in his dark brown eyes, or his slim yet muscular frame, or the angle of his  _fucking_  cheekbones.

She dimly slid her attention to the compass when he held it up.

"Looking for this, or are you too busy looking at me?"

He was speaking with his normal accent now, a mix of British and some other flavors that she had never managed to identify.

When she failed to respond to him, he threw her the compass, and she only caught it out of reflex. He stepped around the counter and poured himself a glass of wine.

"Glad to see that I can still make you speechless, love."

Oh god, how did she not pick up on it?  _Love, Lizzie, darling_ …

Turning around in her chair, she continued to gape at him. He still had his facial hair, just without the braids on his chin. His hair was loose, hanging in tousled dark chocolate waves, and his skin still had that perfect smooth Caribbean tan.

"Granted, last time you saw me was…1973, was it? Something like that, I think."

"What? Um...yes, '73 is right. London."

"We had a bit of an argument."

Ignoring the blush that was surely staining her cheeks, she sat up straight.

"A 'bit' doesn't quite cover it," she snapped.

Flashes of a crummy motel, slamming doors, a penetrating cold that had turned her blood into sludge, angry dark eyes staring at her from across the room with a charged fire, a raw emotion that had set her hair on end, that had made her shake and fight the urge to back away, to run...fragments of things said, awful things, buried so deep in her mind that the mere thought of them threatened to tear her apart now...and it was only her skill at remaining aloof that didn't give it all away, that didn't turn her into a thing that could barely be called human, thoughts and memories preying on her as she crumpled to the floor in a heap.

"You called the cops on me."

"You tried to  _steal_  the car I was hunting!"

"And the only way to stop me from succeeding was to turn me in?"

"You aren't exactly stupid."

He had the audacity to smile at that. Cheeky fucker, but _oh_ , she loved his smile. While he was digging around in the cupboard for who knows what, she scrolled back through their conversation, seeing it in an entirely new light.

"I know, and that car was damn beautiful too," he said over his shoulder.

"I am assuming that you got an eyeful of it while you were rooting around in my garage?"

He returned from the cupboard with a pack of Marlboro cigarettes and a lighter in his hand. She watched, mesmerized, as he placed one between his lips and lit it, smoke wafting into the air around them.

"Not really, I was too interested in that Roadrunner of yours. You're lucky you still have it."

"You wouldn't be alive if you had stolen that car, Jack."

The end of the cigarette glowed when he took a deep drag, laughing at her indignant tone.

"So, are you going to tell me why you have been collecting things of mine? The compass was the only thing you had left, wasn't it?"

_No_. Well, now it wasn't. She hadn't considered having a hope of collecting his hair beads, but if he had one, he damn sure knew where the rest of them were.

"Your...your hair stuff. I need all of that yet. And because the property of Captain Jack Sparrow would sell fairly high on the market these days. Having a full set would fill my pockets."

"Are you suggesting that I would  _allow_ you to sell my things?"

Oh. She hadn't considered that.

"Who do you suppose allowed you to acquire them in the first place? Let's see, I put the pistol in the museum in Beijing, I planted the sword in Cairo, and the hat, well, you almost caught me when I planted the hat. Everything of mine that you have found has been given to you...by  _me._ "

She had the grace to look impressed by his orchestrations.

"Why are you in Mumbai?"

Stubbing the cigarette out against the box, he sipped at his wine before answering.

"Retrieving payment for something. Not your concern."

"Keeping me outside the loop, then?"

He perched his elbow on the counter, waggling his finger back and forth between them.

"You and I, we are in direct competition. I only gave you the compass and the rest of my effects because I knew that you were the one who deserved them. Don't think that I am going to give you anything else that could inconvenience me."

"Inconvenience you? So you expect me to be on my merry way after this?"

A gleam entered his eyes, making goosebumps sprout all over her skin.

"No, love. I was actually wondering if you wanted to go to a party of sorts with me."

"A...party?"

"Mhm, I have a dress here for you, if you are interested."

_She would go anywhere with him, anywhere he wanted, do anything he wanted to do, if he would just please, tell her, tell her that he remembered and that he'd gotten past all of it, that he'd moved on, that it wasn't still torturing him, that he'd forgiven her, because she wasn't sure that she'd forgiven herself._

Nodding mutely, finding the idea of staying here without him horrifying just as any death threat might be. 

"Marvelous, it's in the bedroom."

She climbed off of the barstool and headed off, only allowing herself a mild bit of hyperventilation when the door was surely closed. The damned man could still make her wild, the feeling piercing through the sudden storm raging inside of her.

She  _hated_ him. And loved him. Sometimes, she wasn't sure where the line was. She  _did_  know that this was  _not_ how she had expected her night to go.

The dress was on the bed. It was a pretty violet purple, sparkling with crystals that adorned the hem. Quickly undressing, she slipped it on, discovering that it was about knee length. She also discovered that she was going to need help zipping it up.  _Of course._

Sighing, she headed back out of the room, barely ignoring the way Jack's gaze climbed up her body.

"Can you help me please?" she asked, turning around and pointing at her back.

His cologne assaulted her once again as he crossed the room, stopping just behind her.

"My pleasure, love," he whispered into her ear, the vibration of his voice sending delicious sensations across her neck. His fingers raised the zipper slowly, making damn sure to graze the skin of her back on the way up. "If you want, I can help you out of it later too."

Flashes of heated moments between them raced through her mind. Stolen kisses against numerous walls, his mouth in places that were definitely not  _her_ mouth, waking up next to his sleeping form. Normally she would have retorted with an immediate  _no_ , but if she was being honest with herself, the prospect of revisiting their physical relationship sounded  _very_ attractive right at that moment. It had been so long, so  _long_. 

"We'll see."

He grinned at her and stepped around the couch to dig in the briefcase again, extracting a pair of car keys.

"Let's go. And you better not even  _think_ of stealing this car."

"Ooh, what are you going to do, punish me?"

"Try it and find out Lizzie."

She fought the sudden ridiculous urge to stick her tongue out at him, and they both exited the hotel room, her lingering behind for a second, with the last resolve on the tip-top of the hurricane that she had suddenly found herself subjected to with the initials JS, to act as normal as possible, to not shatter the glass, to not pop this bubble of absolute terrifying euphoria mixed with a little bit of danger, both for her mind and her body, for her fortitude, her emotions, her very being, because if he slipped through her fingers now, when he was barely in them to begin with, it would kill her. 


	2. The Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2! Hope you all enjoy! I loved writing this one :)

September 7th, Monday Night, 8:30 PM

* * *

 

It was a bit difficult to not stare at his arse as they walked down the hallway. It was even more difficult to not imagine the way her hands would clutch it, her nails digging in, as his hips drove into her mercilessly. Paris, Copenhagen, London, Santiago, she figured they had corrupted each city with their fleshy adventures, probably more. It might have been forty something years since she had seen him, and she might have been with men in-between, but it pained her to admit, both in her stubborn mind and between her legs, that none of them could put fire in her blood like Jack. To most, he seemed like he would be the self-serving type when it came to sex, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. He worshiped her when his clever hands trailed across her fevered skin.

Perhaps she was going to add Mumbai to the list before too long.

"I can  _feel_ you staring, you know."

Her eyes snapped up, narrowing at the back of his head.

"I wasn't staring."

"I can even hear you  _thinking_. We could have a quickie in the car if you're that distracted."

"You're not that good."

"That's a lie."

He didn't even hesitate.  _Asshole_.

"You just have quite the proclivity for choosing...well-tailored suits," she huffed. "And  _cars_ ," she added in admiration when they stepped into the garage.

"See why I told you not to steal this one?"

Sitting before her was a 1994 McLaren F1 with blood red and black pearlescent paint, blacked out rims, blacked out headlights, and a pitch black interior. The damn thing looked ready to  _kill_ someone, and it made her mouth water.

"How much horsepower?" she breathed as she walked down the side of it, fingers touching it with reverence.

"725. I made some modifications."

Modifications here meant that he had most likely stuffed it with a few NOS tanks.

"You  _have_ to let me drive this thing."

"And what do I get in return?"

She glanced up at him from the other side of the car, a devilish look in her eyes.

"Maybe I will ride  _you_ in it."

"I hope that won't be the only time... _or_ place," he snarked, unlocking the doors.

"Always so demanding, Jack."

They both settled in, taking a moment just to admire the fact that they had the opportunity to sit where they were sitting.

"I just know your appetite, especially when it comes to  _me._ "

"You're not  _that good_ ," she insisted again and then blushed because it sounded like the only person she was trying to convince was herself.

"Keep telling yourself that, darling."

Oh god, she loved it when he pulled out his old lines, especially when he added just the right  _Captain_  tinge to his voice.

" _Whatever_ …"

A rush of power flooded through her when he turned the engine over, both from the rumbling of the car, just oozing with  _sexy_ , and from the fact that  _Jack_ was sitting behind the wheel. Seeing him drive fast cars was almost as big of a turn on with him as sex.

'Nice American accent, by the way," she remarked as the McLaren rolled across the cement, and then through the opening garage door.

"I can do a southern American accent too. And a French accent, a German accent, and probably a Jamaican accent if I tried hard enough."

"I'm sure. Who was on the phone?"

He looked sideways at her, raising a brow.

"My coordinator."

" _Ah_."

In their line of work, it was incredibly important to keep your face unknown to clients, both so that no one could pin down patterns, and so that you could disappear if need be without too many issues. Naturally, someone had to  _pretend_ to be you when dealing with money and item exchanges. Ringa was hers, and she would damn near trust the woman with her life.

"So, this  _party_. Did you just want to get me in a dress, or is there something else going on?"

He didn't answer right away, and she knew that he was deliberating the pros and cons of telling her. Jack had always been...guarded, even with her.

"There is... _someone_  who was given a job that would...oh bugger it. I have an assassin after me."

" _What?_ An  _assassin_? And you are dragging me along so I can watch you kill him?"

"Kill him?" he parroted with humored surprise as they turned onto another street. "First of all, it's a her, and no, I don't plan to kill her. I plan to give her a better offer."

"What the  _fuck_  does that mean?"

"I would rather like to see her  _employer_ dead,  _so_ , if I put a bounty on  _his_ head that is worth more than mine, I doubt she would turn it down."

Despite knowing that Jack was more than capable of handling himself, physically or in a game of words, she couldn't help but be worried for his safety every time he put himself in danger.

"You had better hope so. Do I know her?"

"You might. Grab my phone out of my pocket."

' _Grab his phone out of his pocket'_ her brain echoed.

She had been unprepared to touch him at that particular moment.

"I won't complain if you decide to let your hand wander a little though," and she could hear the shit-eating smirk in his voice without even looking at his stupid face.

"Wouldn't want to crash this beautiful car," she responded in a sing-song tone that was dripping with innocence, sliding the Xperia out of the pocket of his trousers.

"You're suggesting that I can't drive and get a handjob at the same time? You disappoint me, Lizzie."

She  _definitely_ hated him.

When he snickered, she realized that she had said it out loud. Rolling her eyes, she opened the photo gallery and then balked when the thought occurred to her that she was looking in  _Jack Sparrow's_ photo gallery. He glanced over, watching her finger tap on the screen with hesitation.

"There isn't anything inappropriate in there, don't worry. Never have time for any of that."

The fact that she had half hoped that there would be something inappropriate made her blush just a little bit.

"Sex with you does only last a few minutes."

Let him chew on that.

"Lying is a grievous sin, you know. Best be careful," he replied smoothly.

_Damn._

"Lust is a  _deadly_ sin, and you have plenty of that."

"Touche, though I don't think you have room to complain about it."

It  _was_  embarrassing how much time she spent on thoughts that orbited around fucking him, but she couldn't help but hope that one day there would be more than that between them. Scrolling through the photos, she arrived at a recent one of a woman. Asian,  _Japanese_ by the look of her.

"Nope, have never seen her face."

There had been a couple of attempts on  _her_ life over the years, but most of the time she kept herself on the fringes just enough to never have a complete presence in the world.

"Yeah, well, hopefully this will be the only time then."

The McLaren pulled into a parking lot next to what looked like an industrial warehouse.

"So the payment that you mentioned earlier, on the phone. I will find out what it was for eventually, so you might as well just tell me."

He put the car in park, turned it off, and then sat in the seat silently.

"It isn't related to  _this_ ," he pointed at the building," but it is something that I feel like you would be inclined to try and take from me."

"Oh? You paid someone else to steal something for you?"

A ring on his finger caught the moonlight when he drummed them against the steering wheel.

" _No_ , but I did pay someone to transport it to my house. One of my houses, anyway. An unregistered one."

"And  _what_ is this thing? Why so secretive about it?"

He locked eyes with her, silently telling her to back off, but she didn't, returning the intense stare without flinching.

"Fucking  _fine_ , but if you get it in your head to actually try and take it from me, I am not going to care that you are  _you_."

 _Doubt it_. At least she hoped that she could find doubt in that statement. She was fully aware that having Jack as a full-blown enemy would not be a fun experience for her. Just because she hadn't seen him for awhile didn't mean that she hadn't kept track of him.

"I finally found the Mao Kun Map."

"The  _navigational charts_?"

"Mhm. And they're  _mine_."

"I'm impressed that you found them before me. I have been on their tail for a very long time."

It was true. Ever since she had discovered that they still existed, she had chased every lead possible to get her hands on them. Unfortunately, someone-

 _No_. Could the self-absorbed tosser sitting next to her actually have the audacity to keep her from getting the navigational charts?

Who was she kidding? Of course he could.

Fucker. Asshat. Twatwaffle.

" _You_ were the one that kept getting in my way!" she exclaimed, twisting in her seat to glare at him fully, outrage sparkling in her eyes.

"Indirectly. I was more of a puppet master, rather than an active player."

His eyes glittered with amusement, and she had half a mind to gouge them out.

Every time she had gotten a lead on the damn charts, something else always came up. A new job, a problem, or something else that drew her attention away. At least, she had thought that they were just annoying coincidences. Now she knew that it was just Jack slowing her down.

"Maybe I  _will_  steal them," she muttered, her face arranging itself into an annoyed pout.

"Let's go in," he said, chuckling at her.

"Hang on a moment. I still haven't figured out why you brought me."

They climbed out of the car and straightened their clothes.

"If I get shot or stabbed, or whatever-the-fuck,  _someone_ needs to drive the getaway car."

"Do you find it highly likely that you are going to get shot or stabbed?"

"Why, does the idea bother you?"

_No. Yes. More than she cared to admit. Astronomically._

"A little."

"I doubt it, but you never know."

She  _did_  know that Jack Sparrow was a fucking artist behind a handgun, or any type of gun, really. He had always preferred to solve confrontations with words first, but if that failed, bullets certainly helped, and fists if it came down to it. If Jack did get injured, she was damn sure that the other person would have a couple ounces of lead embedded in their body too.

"And where would we get away to, exactly?"

"Well, somewhere with medical supplies would be preferable," he deadpanned.

They had both figured out over the years that the Fountain of Youth only provided protection against old age and disease. It did nothing against getting shot in the goddamn head with a 50 caliber bullet, as an example.

"No shit. I mean, is there a hospital or something close by?"

"Probably, but we can worry about that later. Come on."

When they walked through the door, music reached her ears, a thumping beat, with a voice that sounded incredibly familiar.

It was Ginuwine, she realized.  _Pony_.

 _Of all the songs.._.

"Are you sure we are still in India?" she whispered.

"It does rather seem like someone cut a chunk out of California and plopped it here," he replied, but his attention was otherwise distracted.

Jack led her through several gray hallways that made her feel like she was in the basement of a hospital. When they finally stopped in front of double doors with purple lights flashing through the cracks, she put a hand on his shoulder.

"Is she expecting you?"

"Not... _exactly_ ," he said hesitantly, turning to look at her. He was hiding something from her.

"What?"

"We actually just missed her."

"Missed her  _where_?"

"I would say that she breached the hotel room about the time that we got in the car."

"Are you fucking _kidding_  me?"

"Negotiating is always easier in a public place."

"Again, no  _shit_ , but that was awfully fucking narrow, Jack."

"If you hadn't putzed around for so long, it wouldn't have been."

"Right, because trusting random strangers is something that I do all the time."

" _I wasn't a random stranger_ ," he snapped, his voice rising.

"I didn't know that!"

Jack was about to fling another retort at her when the two doors slammed open, a drunk couple stumbling out eating each other's faces.

"If I ever lose enough brain cells to start kissing women like that, just shoot me please," Jack muttered, watching them with disgust.

"I might just shoot you anyway."

His eyes slid over to look at her.

"Look, I knew I had enough time to get both of us out of there  _before_ she got there. I left her a note."

"A note? And what did the note say?"

"Just an address. This address."

"And what are we to do in the meantime?"

"This  _is_ a party, darling."

Staring beyond him, she finally got a good look at where they were apparently going to be spending their evening. It looked like a classic rave, with sweaty bodies jumping and flinging themselves around, but she knew that appearances could be deceiving. There was a DJ freaking out on some kind of drugs in his booth, not a security guard in sight, and the ceiling was incredibly high, with a higher walkway going around the edge of the building. It looked like there were more rooms up there.

"No, this is a gathering. Of  _us_. At least, mostly us, and a few stragglers."

"I always loved how smart you are."

A pang of... _something_ always invaded her chest whenever the word love came out of his mouth, regardless of the context it was in. When she lay awake in bed at night, even during the times when he was nothing more than a whisper of a name on someone else's lips, and sometimes when he lay asleep next to her, she wished that he could love  _her._ But she had concluded that he wasn't built for commitment, to anyone.

They walked in side by side, at least for a second, before Jack headed immediately for the bar. Normally, she would have chastised him for getting buzzed before trying to negotiate with an assassin, but she knew better than anyone how well Jack Sparrow could hold his alcohol. He could probably pull off a bank heist after drinking the whole damn bar.

"A Dark N' Stormy. Make it fast."

The bartender smirked at him, the song changing to  _Wild Thing_ by Tone-Loc in the same moment.

"What's in that?" she asked, mentally running through her list of favorite drinks.

"Black Seal rum and ginger beer, with a lemon. Tasty."

"Rum. Should have known."

Then, a fiendish idea popped into her head, well, both fiendish and possibly insane. Making sure Jack was listening, she leaned over to order her drink.

"I'll have a Screaming Orgasm, please."

Vodka, Irish cream, and coffee liqueur, all put together into heaven in a shot glass.

She grinned triumphantly for about three seconds at Jack's immediate reaction. His drink had just reached his lips, when he froze, staring at her intensely, his eyes transitioning from shocked to predatory before she could gather her wits, and she could almost  _see_ all of the ways that he had just thought about  _giving her_  an orgasm. Now, she was clenching her legs together trying to ignore the ache between them, her smile long gone.

"You should know by now that it is a bad idea to provoke me, Lizzie."

"Maybe I like doing it."

When she got her drink, they found a quiet-ish corner to stand in.

"I never said you didn't. I just said it was a bad idea.  _I_  have no qualms about carrying you upstairs and taking you against a wall right now."

She choked on the alcohol that had almost completed its descent down her throat. God, if he kept talking like that, he wouldn't even have to take her upstairs. The wall just behind them would do fine.

After she got over her mild coughing fit, she spent the next several minutes glaring at every female that made suggestive eyes at Jack, knowing full well that she had no right to be possessive over him, or jealous of them.

"Damn, if looks could kill…" he said at one point, earning a glare of denial from her.

Then, a woman in an off-white suit wove through the crowd towards them. Her black hair was pulled back in a sleek bun, and the only makeup she wore was a shade of dark brown on her lips. She looked like she was staring directly into Jack's soul.

"Suzuki, long time no see."

_He knew her?_

Instead of reacting to Jack's greeting, the woman's eyes shifted to her.

"You brought protection?" The question was directed at Jack.

"Yeah, she's my guard dog. I really needed one of those."

 _As if_.

"I saw your pretty car out in the lot. Don't suppose you want to throw that into your offer?"

"Not a chance."

"Then I might just kill you after all."

"I wouldn't recommend trying. Come on, let's go upstairs."

She tensed when the woman looked at her again with a disdainful expression. She was about to ask what the fuck her problem was, but then Jack quieted her with a very quick, very serious look over his shoulder. Jack could appear on the surface to be flippant and aloof, but underneath that, he was a predator; a leopard hiding in the bushes waiting for his prey to show even the slightest weakness.

He led them both into one of the side rooms in the top right corner of the building, making sure that no one up there would be able to overhear them. It had a simple pair of armchairs, a small fridge, a table with a deck of cards half open laying on it, and the smell of cigarette smoke was so strong that she found it hard to breathe.

Once they were alone with the door closed and locked, Suzuki immediately rounded on the two of them, her hand darting inside her jacket, freezing just a second later when she found herself staring into the barrel of Jack's Beretta.

"I'll put a bullet in your forehead before you can even complete the thought of pulling your gun on her," he snapped, his face a cold mask of warning.

She couldn't help but feel a rush whenever Jack threatened lives over her.

"Why is she  _here_?"

"She's too pretty to leave at the hotel. Gotta have some kind of arm candy."

_Translated into 'not your fucking concern'._

Suzuki's eyes narrowed into slits.

"How much is my bounty?" Jack demanded, ignoring her obvious distaste.

A few tense seconds ticked by, the music outside of the room filtering in, garbled and distorted.

"Three million, directly from Handa. But I'm not collecting on it."

"What the fuck are you talking about? You like money, Suzuki. You like money so damn much that if you could find a way to fuck money, you would."

"You want Handa dead, obviously, and I need something stolen."

"And were you going to tell me this before or after you broke into my hotel room?"

"It was a risk I was willing to take," she said as she dug her phone out of her jacket, scrolled for a moment, then tossed it to Jack, who caught it with the hand that didn't still have his gun trained on her. He glanced down just for a moment to look at the screen, a flash of confusion on his face.

"You are going to pass on my assassination for a cardboard box?" he asked, handing the phone back.

"It's a box of evidence. Currently housed in Scotland Yard, but it tends to move around."

"Evidence for what?"

"Agree first and I will give you all the information you need."

"Why me?" he asked, finally putting away his gun.

"Because this can't fail, and you aren't known for fucking jobs up."

"Fine, I'll do it, on one condition. She helps."

_How kind of you to ask first, Jack..._

"As long as you recover that box and what is inside, I don't care who helps you."

She straightened her suit and crossed the room, stopping to hand something to Jack, who was tracking her every movement.

"Here. This will tell you everything," she said, pressing a USB drive into his hand. "I will kill Handa for free."


	3. The India Heat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3! This is an interlude chapter, as the story really gets going in the next one, so it will be quite hefty. :) Hope everyone enjoys, and please drop me a review! I would love to respond to your thoughts!

September 7th, Monday Night, 10 PM

* * *

"Why did she try to draw a gun on me?"

She knew it had to be between the fact that the woman thought she was dangerous, or because she thought that Jack was trying to trick her somehow.

They were halfway back to the hotel, and it was the first time either of them had spoken since they had left the party.

"She's a paranoid bitch. You weren't in any danger of getting hurt," Jack replied.

"Because I had the big  _bad_  Jack Sparrow to protect me?"

He gave her a sideways glance, his lip curling at the corner in a half-smile. Even though she liked to tease him about it, she knew that the only thing that would stop him from protecting her if necessary was death. To anyone that wasn't her, it would have been obvious enough by precisely how fast he had drawn his gun the second he saw Suzuki's arm so much as  _twitch_ , and she also knew that he wasn't kidding about being able to put a bullet in her head before the woman even knew what had happened.

In 1969, she had been captured in Russia while on an information gathering mission for something she was supposed to steal, and Russians weren't known for giving things up unless forced, especially when they had a bounty as big as the one they had on her. Everyone involved in keeping her locked up in that disgusting prison had regretted even  _looking_  in her direction after Jack found out that they had her. Action movies got dangerous people all wrong. It was never slinging gunfire everywhere or rigging a place with explosives, or storming a compound with the equivalent of the United States military packed into one person.

It was deconstructing them from the inside, sending threats to them while in a business meeting, playing games with their heads, waiting outside in the car park and having a  _chat_ , generally with the added help of a firearm, leeching money off of them until they don't have enough to pay for dinner, enticing their enemies to attack them, until they are so dysfunctional amongst themselves that they don't know friends apart from hostiles.

Jack ruined them for three days, threatened their houses, bank accounts, jobs, cars, and reputations,  _terrorized_  them until they could barely go outside without having a panic attack. When he decided that they had reached the point of near insanity, he entered the prison compound in the dead of night like a wraith, taking them out one by one, wrapping wire around their necks, embedding a knife into several of their hearts, emptying the round of his Heckler and Koch P9 into the back of nine heads, before finally arriving at the leader. Jack had killed  _him_ with the man's own shotgun. None of them had families or things they were leaving behind (she had checked while gathering research for the mission before her capture), so their deaths were no great loss.

It was the only time that Jack had ever been something that put her on edge, and she would never admit it to anyone, but in the darkness of her own mind, it excited her too. The cool, collected, bad-boy trickster and  _very_  occasional sweetheart (though if she tried to call him that he might just leave her in Mumbai) that was in control of everything turned into a cold-blooded psychopath  _only_  for her. He never talked about it afterward, besides informing her that he also knew that they had no family to leave behind, and she didn't pester him about it. She didn't think it was because he was disturbed by his own behavior, but it wasn't something that brought him joy either.

She often wondered if, through a strange series of events, the character of the Joker in the Dark Knight had been entirely based off of that dark side of Jack. If anyone were to ever succeed in killing her, there was a good chance that Jack might turn into something like that, maybe not with the purple suit, face makeup and neon green hair, but certainly someone who started to find joy in chaos, and nothing else.

Of course, immediately after he had returned her back home, he had bombarded her with almost-interrogations, making dinner for her, asking if she was okay every three hours, drawing baths for her, grilling her about whether they had hurt her or not, swearing that he would murder all of them if he did, then remembering that he  _already_ murdered all of them.

Four years later she had called the cops on him in London for trying to steal  _her_ car. She would almost say the bastard had deserved it, but she always felt guilty looking back on it. A lot of the events between 1969 and 1973 stayed in the vault of things that she didn't like to think about.

"If I had to choose between saving you and saving this car, you might just have the edge," he said, turning onto the motorway.

The classic Jack Sparrow language for saying he cared about her, immensely, and she couldn't help but smile a little at it. But even through all of their history, and everything that they had been through together, the subject of commitment to each other, or love, or any other label she could think of for it, had never been brought up.

She knew why, and she knew that the reason she had arrived at was only one facet of the complicated matter of a real romantic relationship between them. Both of them had walled their hearts off so deeply that it would take a great force to even  _start_  to crumble them. Jack, she suspected, was terrified of getting hurt, because once he let her in, once he let her see that innermost layer of him, betrayal would be the end of him.

And she couldn't guarantee that she wouldn't hurt him. She certainly wouldn't  _cheat_ on him, but her life was so erratic that eventually, she might fuck up some other way.

"How do you know her?" she asked.

He sighed, as though he had expected the question to come up eventually.

"It's complicated," he answered as his phone started to ring.

"Chris, what's up?"

"Yeah, I dealt with her."

"I will tell you later. I need you to arrange to ship a car to my house in Bath."

"Yeah, a  _car_."

"Chris, I just spent 60 grand on a map. Four grand is pocket change."

"I don't give a shit. Tell him to shut the fuck up."

"Meet me at my place."

"Thanks, bye."

He put his phone in the center console and glanced at her with a raised brow. She realized that he was waiting for her to ask more questions.

"Bath?"

"Yeah, that's where we're going tomorrow morning. I have a place there."

"Tomorrow morning? And where do you suppose I'm going to sleep tonight?"

"With me, of course."

_Of course._

"Am I actually going to get to sleep? And what clothes am I going to wear to bed?"

A snarky little laugh bubbled up from his throat.

"You can wear one of my t-shirts. Should be big enough to count as clothes. And we have to get up early."

"Since when has that stopped you?"

"I  _seem_ to remember that it was you who insisted on shower sex, and then accosted me again in bed that time just before we were supposed to catch that plane to Cairo. Almost missed it. What did we get, two hours of sleep?"

1971\. They had been hired as a pair to steal a matching set of amulets from the Egyptian Antiquities museum. It had been an  _interesting_ experience.

"Two and a half, actually," she countered with annoyance.

"Yeah, well, you have no room to complain about  _my_ sex drive, love."

She leaned her head back against the seat, watching the city fly by in a myriad of blurred lines and colors.

"I  _am_ sorry for being so rude to you earlier."

This time a truly genuine laugh, a deep chuckle that gave her goosebumps, rumbled in his chest.

"No, you're not."

After she gave him a look of playful irritation, they sat in silence for the rest of the car ride. She must have dozed off for a few seconds because she awoke to Jack nudging her shoulder from outside the car. They were parked in the garage again.

"Come on, the plane leaves tomorrow morning at 8:30, so we really do need to get some shut-eye if we don't want to be zombies tomorrow. Although you apparently got a head start."

She climbed out of the seat, running her hands through her hair.

"I think all of the India heat is just getting to me."

When he didn't say anything, she glanced up at him to find him staring at her like a particularly tasty piece of candy. It only took him about a step and a half to pin her against the now closed car door, and she didn't even have a chance to protest when he encircled his arms around her, fastening his mouth to hers.

He kissed her with the expertise that only he possessed, caressing just the right spots, making her skin tingle with  _long_ pent up wanting. She threaded her fingers into his hair, kissing him back with fervor, pushing her tongue against his lips.

Out of pure instinct, she thrust her hips up slightly, and any other man would have been blind to the invitation, but not Jack. He grinned against her mouth, abandoning it to give attention to her neck. His hands snuck under her dress to tug her panties down, leaving them laying on the ground where she had stepped out of them.

Then he was lifting her and tugging her dress up to her waist in one motion. She automatically wrapped her legs around him, inhaling sharply when she felt his erection pressing against her core,  _damning_ the clothes that were still separating them.

 _God_ , she wanted to touch him. It had been too damn long, and she was tired of waiting. Her hands dove down to his belt buckle in a frenzy, fully intending to release him, and then she actually  _whimpered_ when he pulled them away.

"What? What are you-"

"Shh, we can worry about me later," he said into her neck, and she felt a flood of fire go straight to her center just from the sound of his voice. "You've been distracted all night,  _you_  need some relief."

She wished she could deny that. She wished that she could deny that the world-renowned thief, Elizabeth Swann, got distracted from being too turned on by Jack Sparrow.

But she couldn't, especially not when he slid two fingers into her entrance, reclaiming her lips with a kiss that sucked the breath out of her lungs, his other hand curled around her thigh to support her.

" _Damn_ , you're wet," he whispered into her ear when he detached his mouth.

"It's your fault," she managed to say in broken syllables that were punctuated by moans from the delicious friction his fingers were creating.

"Mmm," he agreed,  _finally_  rubbing his thumb on her aching clit in slow agonizing circles, speeding up the movements when she reached down to clutch at his wrist, the fingers of her other hand wrapping around his shoulder for  _something_ to keep her attached to reality. As the knot in her stomach tightened, and the small bursts of heat started to explode under her skin, she thrust against his fingers rhythmically, running through her list of curses when she nestled her head against his neck.

"...Jack,  _Jack,_ I'm s- _oh_ -I'm so close..."

With one perfectly timed swirl of his thumb, she was already tumbling off of that golden precipice, her core tightening into a vice around his fingers, clenching at them with each wave of pleasure that ripped through her, erasing all knowledge that she had of everything at the very peak, and then she slumped against the car as though she had been shoved out of a very pleasant dream.

Jack withdrew from her, pausing to lick his fingers clean before planting a sweet kiss on her lips, letting her down from him gently, keeping himself pressed against her and one hand on her hip to steady her.

When the final aftershock left her body, she opened her eyes and smiled at him gratefully.

"I would say thank you, but then I would feel bad," she said, glancing down at the bulge in his trousers.

" _Well_ , you're welcome anyway. And as much as I would like to let you rip all of my clothes off, I do  _not_ want to wait for the next flight tomorrow."

"But-"

"Don't think that I'm not going to go out of my mind with thinking about finally being inside you again because I started doing that the second I saw you in the damn hotel room, but we just don't have the time."

He stepped back from her, and she bent to pick up the panties on the ground, not bothering to put them back on.

"Fine, but I am only agreeing because I like the idea of you torturing yourself."

"I'm  _sure_."

* * *

They let themselves back into the hotel room, and Jack immediately started to strip off his suit, laying everything on the top of the couch. She watched him unabashedly from her perch at the counter, grinning when he noticed.

"You always did like to watch me undress."

"Are you complaining?"

He was down to his gray undershirt and trousers now, and the more skin he exposed, the more she wanted to forget about the damn flight to Bath.

"Of course not, darling, but I rather think that watching  _you_ undress is more fun."

"You couldn't just  _go to bed_  after watching me undress, Jack Sparrow."

"Touche," he replied, smirking his damn face off, dropping his trousers to reveal a matching pair of boxers. " _I_ am going to go take a shower."

 _Dammit_. Terrible images to have in her head after she had just orgasmed.

"I'll get in after you then." She poured herself a glass of wine as he disappeared down the hallway.

Taking a moment to reflect on how her day had gone, it occurred to her that she still had stuff in her other hotel room. Scrolling through her phone to locate Ringa's number, she pressed call.

"Hey Liz, que pasa?"

"I will tell you all about it when I am not distracted by a gorgeous naked man that is standing in a shower just a few feet away from me."

"Oh,  _dios mio_ , who is it?"

"It's um...it's  _Jack_."

Ringa squealed into the phone, giving her the strong sneaking suspicion that she had known about Jack's presence in Mumbai.

" _Did you know_?"

"...I knew he was  _in_  Mumbai, but I swear that I didn't try to contact him in any way. I would say I am jealous of you, but that would be awfully redundante of me. He's yours, amiga."

"Jack Sparrow,  _mine?_  I'm not sure that's possible."

"Liz,  _carino_ , with the way you have talked about him, I would be shocked if that wasn't true."

"Yeah, well, maybe. Listen, I need you to arrange to have everything that was in my hotel room shipped to my place, please. I won't be going back there to get it myself."

"No hay problema, you just relax in Jack's bed all you want."

" _Ringa!_ "

"Hey, hey, just saying."

" _Good night,_  I will talk to you tomorrow."

"Si, adios, duerma bien, amiga."

They both hung up just as the shower shut off. Both, fortunately, and unfortunately, he went into the bedroom instead of in her direction. Finishing off her wine, she waited until he emerged.

Noticing the compass sitting on the counter, she picked it up and walked over to the small purse that she had brought with her, shoving it in there.

She had not expected to be lured to a hotel room by Jack, conned into going to a party only to be nearly gunned down by a hit woman, accosted against a McLaren F1, and then subjected to Jack in a  _bed_ , but she was  _not_ complaining about any of it. Life with Jack was  _never_ boring.

Particularly when she got to see him soaking wet, his hair sending water dripping down his naked chest. She tried to not show any reaction to it, tried not to stare, but she couldn't help it, and she wished that his charcoal colored PJ trousers didn't exist.

Even if he was the biggest asshole on the planet, even if he was literally the most despicable man she had ever met, and he wasn't either of those things, she would still have to admit that he had a body to  _die_ for.

She hadn't even realized that he had a shirt hung on his arm until he handed it to her. It was a black faded vintage  _Iron Maiden_ concert tee, and it smelled like his cologne and him.

"That should work. The shower is all yours."

"Thanks."

"Not a problem."

She arrived at the conclusion that he was a bit distracted, which could be for a multitude of reasons, realistically. With Jack, what you could see on the surface was only a small inkling of what was going on inside his head.

Showering quickly, washing with the bottle of Old Spice that was sitting on the railing, she stepped out, dried off, and pulled his t-shirt over her head. The fabric was soft against her skin, and it smelled  _heavenly_. It was just long enough to stop at her mid-thigh.

Padding into the bedroom, she found Jack sitting on the bed scrolling through his phone.

"So, I am assuming we are going to start this whole box of evidence adventure once we get to Bath?"

"Mhm, that's the plan, though it goes without saying that it is probably far more complicated than just retrieving a box."

_It usually was._

"Can't wait," she replied, walking around the other side of the bed to climb in, sliding under the down comforter. "See you in the morning then?"

He shut his phone off and placed it on the nightstand, turning his attention to her. Scooting closer to her, he leaned over and kissed her, almost tenderly. "Mhm, night love."

No matter what had happened, whether they had just had sex, or if they had just survived a shootout with a horde of cops, he had always made it a point to kiss her before going to sleep, and she loved it. When he reached over to turn the lamp off, she realized exactly how tired she was. It was a combination of the heat, the surprise that she had gotten, and the  _other_ surprise she had gotten. She could add orgasming against the door of a McLaren F1 to her list of things that she had done now, thanks to Jack.

Sleep came quickly, her consciousness fading like a wave gently retracting from the shore.


	4. When In Bath, UK

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo! Chapter 4. Hope everyone likes this one, and please drop me a review letting me know what you think! :)
> 
> A few notes:
> 
> For the section where they are doing nothing but texting, I made Lizzie's texts italic, and Jack's texts non-italic. I figured that would help readers figure out who was who. :)
> 
> I have also moved the story to the explicit section.

September 8th, Tuesday Morning, 5:30 AM

* * *

The clock read 5:30 when she was roused from her sleep by  _someone_  curling their fingers in her hair, planting soft kisses on her neck. She relaxed into his touch, scooting closer to him, smiling when he slid his arm around her, sneaking his hand under her shirt to play with her flat stomach.

"Gotta get up, Lizzie," and she smiled again from his sleep-heavy voice. She had the distinct impression that the last thing he wanted to do at that moment was leave the bed, because the second he said that, he snuggled closer to her, and she wholeheartedly agreed with him.

"No, just a little longer," she murmured into the pillow.

"Come on, love, can't miss the plane."

" _Fuck_  the plane."

_That_ earned a delicious chuckle from him, and he evidently decided to double his efforts. She jumped when he started to tickle her, giving him a half-assed attempt at struggling against his hands, before giggling uncontrollably.

"Fine,  _fine,_ I'll get up."

Rolling over to face him, she appreciated the sight of a sleep-tousled Jack for a moment. His hair was rumpled and sticking in different directions, and his expression was a bit less guarded than it normally was.

"Hey," he said, smiling down at her.

" _Hey_."

Groaning, she sat up, rubbing her neck, shaking the sleep from her head. Her hair was rumpled too, extra wavy from sleeping with it wet. Suddenly fingers were turning her head, and a rush of warmth washed over her when Jack kissed her thoroughly as though he was trying to extract the life from her.

When he drew back, she gave him a little half smile, resting her forehead against his.

He gave her another quick kiss and climbed out of the bed, giving her an excellent view of his PJ trousers hugging his arse. She checked her phone while he dug an outfit out of the bag that was sitting next to the bed, and tried to calm her heart down from Jack's lovely assault on her mouth. The outfit that she had been wearing was laying in a pile in the chair next to the window. Yoga pants and a soft white t-shirt. Her limbs ached when she rose to put it on, making a mental note to buy some clothes once she arrived at Jack's place.

As soon as she was dressed, the bathroom door opened.

Jack stepped out wearing a faded gray v-neck t-shirt and black cargo shorts. A tattoo was peeking out from under the fabric near his heart, and she could also see a hint of one on his right shoulder. He had a couple of small ones on his hands, and he had the  _Pearl_ tattooed on his left shoulder. She also knew that he had a poem tattooed on his back.  _Rime of the Ancient Mariner_ by Samuel Taylor. Quite a beautiful one, really, both the tattoo and the poem. And of course, his sparrow tattoo still sat on his wrist.

He reached up, ruffling his hair with his hands. She had once asked him, a long time ago, how long it took him to get used to not having the dreads. She didn't mind that much once she discovered that she could still tangle her hands in it just fine.

' _I feel like I am 15 again every time I touch my head,'_ he had responded. Thankfully he had kept his beard, though she had occasionally wondered what he would look like without it. When he moved a bit closer to start digging in his bag again, she discovered that he had reapplied his cologne.

"Did I ever tell you that I love the smell of Drakkar Noir?"

"Oh yeah?"

"Mhm. I actually wore it for a little while at one point."

"Of course you would prefer men's cologne over perfume, love. Always full of surprises."

"My other go to is Dior's  _Poison_. That one smells heavenly," she said, smiling as he cussed under his breath about the fact that 'the goddamn fucking piece of shit bag ate things'.

He finally found what he was looking for, a pair of metallic silver aviator shades, and hooked them into the neck of his shirt.

"Do you have everything ready?" he asked, standing up, displaying a small slice of tan stomach for her when his shirt shifted.

"I didn't have much to begin with, just the clothes I came here in, my bag, and the dress."

"Good, I'll be just a second, then we can go."

He tapped on his phone, presumably texting Chris, and then gathered everything that he had scattered around the hotel room, shoving it all into his bag. She waited patiently, texting Ringa a good morning and a general itinerary for her day, leaving out the part about the wild passionate sex she was going to have with Jack later. Then again, knowing Ringa, she had just assumed that anyway.

The bed sagged as she rose from it, stretching out her body. She padded to the bathroom to brush her teeth, spritz some perfume on, and pile her hair up in a high ponytail, just in time to catch Jack slinging the bag over his shoulder, sliding his shades onto his face with the other hand.

"Ready?" he asked over his shoulder.

"Yep, time to go melt outside."

"Could always wear fewer clothes."

"Oh, I'm sure that they would  _love_ to see me walking around topless."

"I wouldn't mind. I always said that I like you in a dress or nothing."

_Damn him_.

"Of course  _you_ wouldn't, you twit, but Indians frown on that sort of thing."

"You're a twit," was all he said in response, in the most petulant tone of voice he could come up with as they said goodbye to the hotel room.

* * *

She hated airports. She had always hated airports ever since she first stepped foot in one. Cheap food, cheap gift shops, rude people, and long lines made her dread the experience every time.

"I fucking hate airports," she made a point to tell him, wanting him to share her hate.

"Do you hate them more or less than you hate DMV's?"

_That_  was a hard choice.

"More, probably. Too many things can go wrong, and they usually do."

They were on their way to the airport, and she was positive that Jack had broken several driving laws already.

"A couple of years ago, through an unfortunate series of events, I had to transport a set of rare books through luggage. I took every measure to make sure nothing went wrong, and they still managed to fuck it up."

She  _loved_ when he told stories, especially stories where someone had fucked something up.

"What happened?"

"Well, upon my arrival at the airport in San Francisco, I found out that they had  _lost_ the fucking bag. I think that was the first and only time that I have ever been close to getting escorted out of an airport by the cops."

That would even make  _her_  livid.

"It didn't help that the person whom I had the displeasure of speaking with about this whole ordeal was a head-up-his-ass SFSU college guy. He tried to argue that it was  _my_ fault that the bag was missing. God, that guy was so fucking condescending."

"And what did you tell him?"

She could imagine that whatever Jack told him involved a lot of threatening and cursing.

"I explained to him that the contents of the bag were worth more than his and his parent's and his grandparent's net worth combined, and if he didn't figure out where the fuck it was within the next twenty minutes, I was going to personally see to it that his entire extended family, present, and future, were going to spend the next century trying to locate the pieces of his corpse."

"Oh Christ, Jack," she exclaimed, laughing.

"The guy almost shit himself in panic and tried making like ten phone calls within the space of a minute. I think I might have traumatized him," he said, laughing at the memory too.

"Did you eventually find the bag?"

" _Yeah_ , I found it when I figured out that Chris had accidentally forgotten to tell me that he had arranged for the bag to be shipped directly to my house, rather than on the plane."

"For fuck's sake, so you yelled at the guy for nothing?"

"No,  _no,_ he was still a condescending prick. He deserved to get knocked down a few pegs."

If they ever invented a device that allowed a person to view past memories like a movie, she was going to be a very happy woman.

* * *

The Mumbai Airport was a sprawling ecosystem of men and women on little scooters wearing fluorescent yellow jackets, other men waving around neon sticks, cashiers that were already sick to death of their job five minutes in, ticket booth people tired of getting yelled at for the 875th time in an hour, security people losing their mind over hearing the whirring of the metal detectors for six hours straight, and thousands of bustling people trying to get to their destination, which at an airport, usually meant hell regardless of where you are going, because everyone's destination was an airplane first.

Jack located an empty spot in the parking ramp that was fairly close to the door.

"Did you tell Chris that he had to get the car from here?" she asked as the climbed out of the car.

His face transformed into the expression it usually did just before he was about to throw something incredibly sarcastic at her.

"No, I was just going to park it and hope that he eventually figured it out."

This time she actually did stick her tongue out at him, earning her a snort. He dug his pack of cigarettes out, extracting one and placing it between his lips, then swore when he couldn't find his lighter.

"Of all the fucking things…," he muttered, his voice garbled from the cigarette. She had to giggle at him, and then her giggles turned into near shrieks when he flicked her off, and headed back inside the car to search.

"Are you sure we can even smoke here?" she inquired after she had calmed down, raising her voice so he could hear her.

"I don't really give a shit if we can or not. I'm going to, as soon as I find my goddamn lighter," he shouted back from inside the car. Finally, he emerged again, holding the purple BIC in his hand.

"Where was it?"

"In the crack of doom between the center console and the seat. Must have fallen out of my pocket somehow," he answered, lighting the cigarette and taking a deep drag.

"I'm surprised we didn't fall out of the  _car_ with some of the tricks you pulled on the way here."

"Are you  _really_ questioning my ability to drive?"

"Ooh, I'm so sorry, I forgot how  _sensitive_ you are about that."

He flicked her off again, smirking this time.

"If you recall, I was able to captain a ship with exemplary skill, so…"

"Right, because a ship and a car are exactly the same thing."

He pinpointed her with his classic argument glare.

"They both require a good eye for obstacles, a constant intricate knowledge of all possible routes, a good breadth of knowledge about how the ship or car actually works, and the ability to react to sudden situations with little to no warning."

She was about to open her mouth to give him another retort, but he cut her off.

" _And_ you need to look infinitely more attractive than any other man in the vicinity while doing it, and I believe I checked all boxes that I mentioned," he drawled, leaning against the car with a smug look on his face. He finished off the cigarette and shoved the butt back in the pack.

"Of course you did, you arrogant tosser, I just think you are extra attractive when you flaunt your intelligence."

" _Arrogant_?" he protested, making a show of looking offended, his hand over his heart as though she had mortally wounded him. It earned him another fit of giggles.

"Come on, we gotta go check in and get food or something," he said, giving her a little playful shove when she walked over to him.

He hoisted his bag up, and they started their journey of torture. She already couldn't wait to get to Bath.

* * *

Airport security and the bag check in went smoothly. Now they just had to figure out where their terminal was and find some food.

"Any idea what you are hungry for?" he asked her, looking around for options as they walked.

Ringa always called her incredibly picky when it came to dining out, but she just knew what was good and what was bad. Nevermind that her opinions of those things changed daily.

"Food," she answered.

He turned to look over his shoulder at her, his face an expression of 'are we really going to play this game right now?'

She immediately became flustered like she always did when he made her choose, well, pretty much anything.

"I  _don't_ know, you pick something."

"Fine, let's have Subway."

"I don't really want Subway."

Sometimes she did it deliberately to get a rise out of him elsewhere, but she could never decide what she wanted at airports because she needed to have a filling meal to carry her through the flight, and it needed to taste good, and  _nothing_  tasted good to her at an airport.

"... _Okay_ , maybe a burger?"

"No, I don't really want a burger either."

"Soup?"

"No…"

"Burrito?"

"Not in the mood for spicy…"

Then he stopped walking, turning around to throw his hands up at her.

"Lizzie, darling, you are my favorite person in the world, but damn you are annoying when it comes to food."

"I  _hate_ airport food," she said petulantly, crossing her arms.  _She_ was his favorite person? Part of her felt like she should be silly for even questioning that, and part of her was convinced that it wasn't actually true.

"Would you rather spend the nine-hour flight gorging yourself on airplane snacks?"

"Well,  _no…_ "

"Then pick something. Just spin around and we will eat wherever your finger is pointing at when you stop."

"I guess Subway is fine…"

For just a second, he looked like he really wanted to start an argument, then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"I literally  _suggested that the first time_ ," he muttered, but she could hear the smile in his voice.

She gave him a faux-dangerous look, arching her brow.

"You're fun to annoy," she said, tittering.

"And why is that?"

They headed into the place when they finally found it, and she became curious about what sort of sandwich Jack liked.

"Because you always buy into it."

"Maybe I just like it when you try to annoy me."

She took a moment to reflect on and appreciate the fact that even if they had spent so long apart it felt like no time had passed at all. But a question had been niggling at her since last night.  _Why_ had it been so long? She was trying to ignore it, but it would pop up uninvited every time she had a supposedly quiet moment in her mind.

"Hello, sir, what can I get for you?" the clerk asked when Jack stepped up.

"Give me a foot long chicken teriyaki on Italian herbs and cheese, toasted, with pepper jack cheese."

"Teriyaki?" she whispered behind him. "I would have pegged you for a tuna kind of guy."

"Tuna's nasty."

"And what can I get for you, ma'am?"

"Give me a roasted chicken, um...foot long, on wheat bread with pepper jack cheese, toasted."

'Veggies for you sir?" another employee asked.

"Everything but pickles, and a ton of horseradish," Jack answered, causing her to look round at him.

"You do actually want them to close the sandwich, don't you? And what's wrong with pickles?"

"Pickles are nasty too. Do you  _like_  pickles?"

"They're alright, I guess..."

" _Veggies for you, miss?"_

"Oh sorry, um...green peppers, black olives, lettuce, cucumbers, a bit of jalapenos, and pickles. Oh, and southwest sauce."

" _Gross_ ," she heard Jack say under his breath.

"Well,  _I_ think that horseradish is disgusting."

"Good thing you aren't eating my sandwich then, huh?"

* * *

They finished eating in about twenty minutes, putting them at 7:45. They had 45 minutes to find their terminal and if she knew anything about airports, something was bound to get in their way between now and then.

"I  _hate_ airports," she said again.

"You hate a lot of things, love. For example, you hate stop lights, alarm clocks, uncomfortable chairs, small beds, hard pillows, waiting, and bad TV."

"Stoplights make me wait, hard pillows and small beds make it so I can't sleep, uncomfortable chairs are just a pain in the arse, alarm clocks make me stop sleeping, and bad TV just fails to entertain me."

" _I_ can entertain you and keep you from sleeping," he said with a suggestive glance as they came up on their terminal.

She only responded with a roll of her eyes and texted Ringa to tell her that they were about to leave. They sat in silence until the lady at the counter announced that they were starting to board.

Once they made it up there, Jack produced their boarding passes and handed them over. The lady looked at them for a moment, and then called another employee to look at them, and then made a phone call while still looking at them.

She could see Jack starting to get annoyed out of the corner of her eye. When they didn't say anything to him, he apparently got tired of waiting.

"Is there some kind of  _problem_?"

The lady looked like she was about to deliver the worst news on the planet.

"I'm sorry sir, but we have overbooked the first class section of the plane. There is only room for one of these tickets."

_Oh shit..._

A beat went by, and then another beat, and then Jack fixed her with his classic 'are you fucking kidding me' glare. She visibly got a little nervous.

"These tickets were ordered five days ago," he snapped, jabbing his finger into them just as the woman placed them back on the counter.

"I'm sorry, sir, but there appears to have been a mistake. We can only seat one of you in first class."

"One of us? And where do you suppose the other one is going to sit? On top of the plane?"

The image of one of them holding on for dear life made her physically tremble from holding in laughter.

The woman typed frantically on her keyboard for a second.

"There is one economy seat open, one of you can certainly take it."

"Why can't you make the person that took one of our seats take it?"

"I'm terribly sorry sir, but we cannot relocate passengers who are already seated."

She watched Jack try to reign in his temper as the seconds ticked by.

"Already seated? What the fuck does that have anything to do with it?  _I_  will re-seat them if you won't."

Some of the passengers that were waiting in line started to glance at him nervously.

"Sir, please don't use that kind of language with me-"

"Sorry,  _sorry,_ it's not your fault, but you can tell whoever coordinates the seating on the plane to-" Jack paused, and appeared to rethink whatever it was that he was going to say.

"Tell him or her that I dislike them  _very_ much."

Inside, she was laughing hysterically, but the only amusement she showed on the outside was a small smirk that upturned the left corner of her mouth.

"Jack, it's fine," she said quietly, giving him a reassuring brush of her fingers on the side of his stomach.

That seemed to rein him in a bit. He slid one of the tickets back across the counter.

"Give her the first class seat, I'll take the economy one."

" _What?_ " she whispered, but he ignored her.

"Yes, that will be alright sir. Please enjoy your flight, and sorry for the inconvenience."

He walked away, shaking his head in frustration.

" _Jack!"_

"Lizzie, this isn't an argument. You sit in first class, I sit in economy. End of story."

" _But_ -"

"Unless you can figure out a way for you to sit on my lap…" he said as he looked over his shoulder with a small smile on his face.

"I don't think they would be very pleased with that," she responded, sighing. When Jack made up his mind, it was usually quite difficult to convince him otherwise. They walked through the terminal, and she glared at the back of his head the entire way to the plane.

As she was settling her bag into the seat, Jack sidestepped by her, pausing to brush a quick kiss on her neck. He wiggled his phone at her, reminding her that she could still talk to him over text.

She  _really_ hoped that the person sitting next to him wasn't going to be annoying.

* * *

It was an agonizingly long wait until the no cell phone light switched off. She grabbed her phone immediately and tapped out a message to Jack.

' _Finally.'_

'You're telling me.'

' _Who are you sitting next to?'_

'Some business guy. Seems too preoccupied with his laptop to notice me.'

' _Good. So, speaking of TV, what have you been watching lately?'_

'Uh oh, is this going to turn into 20 questions?'

' _Just curious. :)'_

'Uh-huh. Idk, I like House, Game of Thrones is alright, Black Sails entertains me purely from an experience perspective, Dexter was good until like...the 7th season…'

' _House is awesome. And I agree about Dexter. 'Let's drive into a hurricane, pretend I died, then run away to become a lumberjack. Utter bullshit.'_

She had been incredibly pissed about that finale. Ringa had heard her bitching for a week straight.

'LOL. Yeah, pretty much my reaction.'

' _What about films?'_

'Black Hawk Down is one of my favorites. I like Man on Fire...uhh...The Dark Knight...any Tarantino films…You?'

None of his responses surprised her even a little bit.

' _Deadpool was hilarious. Clerks, Lord of the Rings, I like horror movies too.'_

'Interesting choices. Music?'

' _Michael Jackson, any rock from the 80's, some of the 70's stuff, some techno. A bit of everything really. You?'_

'I frequently listen to Iron Maiden when I am tuning in my garage. I think the guys are a bit sick of them by now. Otherwise, I like Zeppelin, Queen, Bowie, Metallica, etc. I have quite the collection at my place if you want to peruse it.'

' _I could have guessed Maiden from the shirt you had me wear.'_

'You looked hot in that shirt.'

' _I always look hot. :P'_

'Not going to argue there.'

' _So what real estate do you have these days?'_

"Well, I have the main one in Bath, I have a little safe house in Alaska, I have a beach house in Greece, I still have the little cabin in Jamaica, and I just sold the apartment I had in California."

' _We had fun in the cabin.'_

'Haha, on the floor, on the couch, on the kitchen counter, the shower, the bathroom wall…'

' _You forgot the bed ;)'_

'There was an ellipses there.'

' _Can you still play the guitar?'_

'Sure can. Why, want me to play for you?'

' _Is that even a question?'_

'Come up with a couple of tunes then.'

' _K. Thanks for letting me have this seat, by the way.'_

'Not a problem, love.'

' _I do need to buy some clothes and stuff at some point.'_

'Aw, I was hoping that you could just keep wearing my t-shirts.'

' _I could just wear nothing. Speaking of, you wouldn't happen to have a pool would you?'_

'I'm not sure the guys could contain themselves if you walked around the house naked. Then I would have to kill them, so…'

' _And you could contain yourself?'_

'I never said that. And yes, I do have a pool.'

' _Good.'_

'Why, getting ideas?'

' _Maybe. You could always walk around the house naked too, you know.'_

'Who says I don't already?'

' _Jack, if you really did that, I am sure that Chris would be gay by now.'_

'I'm flattered, darling.'

' _Ooh, a movie is starting.'_

'...Taking Lives? Of all the movies to play on an airplane…'

' _Hey, Angelina is pretty hot.'_

'Oh yeah?'

' _I would do her.'_

She had had a girl crush on Angelina every since  _Lara Croft: Tomb Raider_.

'Let's watch. The movie, that is.'

' _Fine, talk later.'_

* * *

Everything had been going fine, the movie was fine, the flight was fine, the seat was fine, it was all  _just_ fine right up until she remembered the sex scene that the damn movie had.

Her knickers were soaked, and there had been a non-stop blush heating her skin for fifteen minutes. Not because of the scene itself necessarily, but because her brain decided to replace Ethan and Angelina with her and Jack, and now that was all she could fucking think about.

The physical torture led her to arrive at an idea that was most definitely insane, but fuck, she needed some kind of relief, and she wanted Jack to share her frustration.

Picking up her phone again, she held it for a moment, making sure that she really wanted to go down this path.

Of course she did.

She tapped out a message with shaky fingers, biting her lip with both anticipation and excitement.

' _Wanna know what I'm thinking about?'_

' _I always want to know what you're thinking about.'_

' _I'm thinking that I want your mouth wrapped around my clit.'_

She could just picture his sharp intake of breath, the shifting he was doing in the seat, and the looking around that he was doing to make sure that no one noticed. She could also picture his devilish little smirk.

' _Damn love, feeling a little inspired? ;)'_

' _Maybe.'_

' _What else are you thinking about?'_

' _I'm thinking about how sexy your face looks when I have my mouth wrapped around your cock.'_

' _Not as gorgeous as your face looks when I slide it into you, inch by inch, nice and slow.'_

Her breathing grew a little heavier, and the ache between her legs was starting to become uncomfortable.

' _I love the way you feel when you're inside of me. So long and thick.'_

' _It's all for you, darling.'_

' _Are you hard right now?'_

' _What the fuck you do think? You're killing me.'_

' _I bet you wish you could touch yourself.'_

She could feel him starting to unravel from here.

' _I want to touch you. I want to fuck your sweet little cunt until you can't even remember your own name.'_

God, she wanted him. She wanted him so fucking bad she thought she might die.

' _Christ Lizzie, are you actually trying to kill me?'_

Insanity. It was pure insanity toying with him like this, but she loved every second of it.

' _It's for making me wait.'_

' _The second we walk through the door of my place, you're mine.'_

* * *

The rest of the flight was the most agonizing four hours of her life. They spent the entire drive to Jack's place in silence, both too out of their minds with desire to form coherent thoughts. It was a miracle that Jack managed to communicate anything to anybody since they had gotten off of the plane.

She didn't even make it all the way into the house before Jack was pushing her against the door, crushing her mouth with his, his hands wandering everywhere, under her shirt, dragging it up, and then tugging her ponytail out to let her hair fall in a mess around her face. Only struggling a moment with the button of his shorts, she shoved them down while he reached a hand behind her to unhook her bra.

Her hands went to pull his shirt over his head when he pushed them back against the door, making quick work of her yoga pants.

" _Leave it_ ," was all he said, his voice a delicious rasp. He shoved his own boxers down, not even giving her a chance to see him before he was lifting her, wrapping her legs around him tightly, attacking her mouth again with an intensity that made her skin light on fire.

"... _Jack, please…"_

Then he was there, his cock nudging at her, sliding against her soaking wet slit, and she couldn't help the desperate moan that spilled from her, turning into an almost violent noise when he entered her, making sure she felt every inch of him, making sure that she knew exactly who was inside of her, filling her, completing her, giving her  _life_.

She clawed her fingernails up his back, clutching it for a moment when he withdrew and thrust, pushing her body against the door with the force of it, and then she tangled her fingers into his hair as he took her, gripping her hips as he drove into her, hitting that glorious spot inside of her that had her biting her lip, tears leaking out of the corner of her eyes from the pleasure of it.

He slowed his thrusts a fraction, fastening his mouth to her neck.

"Do you have any idea what you do to me?" he growled against her skin. She nodded frantically, trying, reaching,  _needing_ him to send her over the edge.

" _Jack_ ,  _I-I can't-"_

" _Fuck, I know love,"_ he whispered, his voice heavy with need, increasing the speed of his hips,  _fucking_ her only the way he could, claiming her mouth only the way he could. Then she was there, her insides rupturing into a thousand tiny explosions, a high keening cry muffled into Jack's shoulder, her core clenching around him, her nails digging into the fabric of his shirt.

Through the blinding haze, she felt his thrusts become erratic, uneven, and she managed to find a small slice of focus.

" _Now, Jack,"_ she whispered into his ear, and then he was there too, slamming himself into her with one final thrust that pinned her against the door, cursing into her neck as he came, his body trembling against her.

" _Fuck me_ ," he breathed, still inside her, still keeping her wrapped around him. Her heartbeat was out of control, and she could feel his against her chest, racing.

"I think I just  _did_ ," she responded once she thought she could form coherent speech. It earned her a post-sex Jack Sparrow chuckle that made her clench around him in a delicious aftershock.

"You're bloody magnificent, love."

He gently let her down from him, withdrawing from her at the same time, earning  _him_  a whimper of protest.

"Lizzie, you have to give me a few minutes. I'm old and decrepit," he insisted, encircling his arms around her.

"Oh god, I don't know if I could handle another round of that. I think I could fall asleep right here."

"I have a bed for that. A rather comfortable one, if you feel up to walking there."

"I think I can manage walking, Jack, just maybe not in a completely straight line."

"I really am good, huh?"

She gave him a half-assed glare before bursting into a fit of quiet giggles, tugging on his hair.

"Come on, I can show you the house tomorrow morning. I am about to fall asleep standing too."

He captured her lips in a tender kiss, and then took her hand and led her down the dark hallways to a sprawling master bedroom, and from what little she could see in the dim lighting, it was gorgeous.

Black hardwood floors, charcoal walls, a huge fireplace, a gigantic bathroom off to the left, a sitting area off to the right, several wall length mirrors, with a smattering of pictures that she couldn't make out.

And the  _bed_. It was a king with black satin sheets and fluffy black pillows.

"The shower's in here love," he said, finally stripping off his shirt, and she didn't actually hear what he had said because she was too busy staring at him.

"... _Lizzie…"_

"Sorry, what?"

"The shower. It's this way?"

She glared at him again as he tried to hold in his laughter.

"I wasn't staring at  _you_ ," she lied, blushing, stalking past him into the bathroom.

"Of course you were darling."

She forgot what they were talking about when she saw exactly how large his bathtub was, and precisely how many water jets it had.

"We can use that later. Quick shower, then bed," he said from behind her, winding his arms around her stomach.

The shower was huge too, with ceramic tiles and a showerhead that had about 45 different settings.

"Do you use the 'light mist' setting often?" she teased as he turned the water on.

"It does rather feel like waves on a ship, so once in awhile."

"Also, out of curiosity, not that I am complaining that you fucked me against your front door, but did you tell anyone who might be here to  _not_ be here?"

He let out a snort.

"Why, don't like an audience?"

"Not particularly."

"Of course I did. Actually, I told Chris, and my resident mechanic Shawn, you'll meet him tomorrow, that if they valued their jobs, lives, or well,  _anything_ , they wouldn't come within 100 feet of the house."

"100 feet? What, did you plan on not making it inside?"

"I wasn't holding my breath, especially after that torture you put me through on the plane."

"That was  _fun_ ," she said, giggling again.

"Maybe for you, but I was stuck in that little stupid ass seat. You're lucky I wore somewhat loose shorts."

"I'll remind you that  _you_ let me have the first class one."

"And I would do it again now, but you really made me question my life choices for about five minutes."

She playfully swatted his chest, then stepped into his arms, just enjoying his presence. When they stepped out of the shower, he wrapped her in the fluffiest softest black towel in existence.

Toweling off himself, he brushed a quick kiss on her lips.

"I'll be in the bed, gotta text Chris really quick."

"Ooh, kissing and telling?"

He flashed her an 'are you serious' look, smirking.

"Not a chance. Actually, you are the first woman that has even been inside this bedroom."

That made her sober up a bit. She sometimes forgot how guarded Jack actually was, and how lucky  _she_ was that he let her in as much as he did. Padding to the bed, she slid under the covers, slid into  _heaven_ rather, the satin sheets making her sigh in contentment.

He finished tapping on his phone, scooting over to kiss her and then turned off the lamp.

"See you in the morning, love."

She had never fallen asleep so easily.


	5. A Web Intricately Spun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 5! Hope everyone enjoys this one! :)

September 9th, Wednesday Morning, 9:30 AM

* * *

Music, some kind of light techno, filtered through the door of Jack's bedroom from somewhere in the house. She was stuck in between thinking that it was still part of her dream, and her cue to get out of bed.

She stuck her hand out to the other side of the bed before she opened her eyes, and felt nothing but sheets. Sighing into her pillow, she lifted her head when her phone buzzed. The phone's clock read 9:30.

It was a text from Ringa.

' _Are you awake yet, amiga?'_

' _I am now. What's up?'_

' _Are you at Jack's place?'_

' _No the plane crashed and I am currently laying on a floating piece of wood in the ocean.'_

' _Muy gracioso, Liz. Have you and Jack gotten anywhere with the evidence situation?'_

' _Not yet, he isn't here right now, as I just discovered.'_

' _Is his bed comfortable?'_

' _Quite, yes.'_

' _Excelente. Text me when you find anything else out.'_

' _Ok. Ttyl.'_

She closed the message and then saw that there was also a message from Jack.

' _Morning darling. I'll be back later, had to take care of something. Feel free to explore the house, eat, whatever you want. I left a set of keys out on the nightstand if you need to go somewhere. Just don't crash my car. ;)'_

She might do it anyway out of spite.

Everything had happened so fast. One moment she had been living her life alone, in isolation, only talking to Ringa, expecting it to be that way for a very long time, and then Jack changed  _everything_. She had forgotten how life felt with him in it, had forgotten the light and the excitement that came with him. It was as though she had been living in a dark cave, and Jack had led her outside into the sunlight.

The first couple of years after they had parted, she figured he would turn up, maybe call her, or show up at her front door one day with a smirk on his face and a job for them to do together, and then a couple more years went by, and she started to worry, started to question everything, started to analyze everything about their relationship. After the ten year mark, she had accepted that he was gone, that he had never valued her much to begin with, and after the fifteen year mark, she had begun torturing herself with images of him with all of the new women he must have been meeting, all of the  _fun_ that he was having without her.

Had she really hurt him that much by turning him in? Or was it something else she had done? Was she really that expendable to him? How much did she know about him really? Was she just assuming that he truly cared for her? Was it just a facade that he put on?

It could be that he had a real reason for being away from her for so long, but that seemed too easy, too convenient for her insecure brain to imagine.

She wasn't a person that depended on a man for her happiness, but life without Jack just hadn't been  _happy_. And of course, she was too terrified to ask him about it, so the only alternative was to either try and figure it out herself or bury it and hope the worry over it just faded on its own.

_Unlikely._

Sighing heavily, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and realized that she still didn't have anything of her own to wear. Padding over to the dresser on the opposite wall, she opened the drawers until she found a pair of loose fitting gray track pants with a drawstring and a pair of light gray boxers. Slipping them on, she crossed the room to the walk-in closet to the right of the bed.

Jesus Christ, he had a lot of t-shirts. The majority of them appeared to be concert tees. Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Motley Crue, and Deep Purple were all present, along with a lot more. She selected a plain black one that looked a little on the small side and pulled it over her head.

Now that she was dressed, she could have a proper look around the room. Standing just in front of the closet, there was a flat screen TV above the two couches to her left in the hexagonal shaped sitting area, the bed was to her right sitting on a raised portion of the floor, the bathroom was a bit further down behind a pair of black-tinted glass doors, there was a black marble fireplace a bit diagonal from the bed, with the black wood dresser sitting to the left of it, and the black hardwood floors were just  _gorgeous_.

Suddenly something caught her eye in the sitting area.

 _Oh_. What she found on the coffee table next to the couch almost brought tears to her eyes. It was a small-scale model of the  _Pearl_ , about a foot long and a foot tall at its highest point. She trailed her finger along the mini sail, a soft smile on her face.

The wall behind the bed was a mural painting of a reaper standing on a barren hill, with a murder of crows circling above it in the sky. It was beautiful if a bit ominous.

On the wall that stretched from the edge of the bathroom to the door was an inlaid set of shelves that housed his collection of CD's and records. He also had a guitar and an amp sitting there. In the middle of the room between the bed and the door was a soft velvet hexagonal rug.

He apparently had as good of a taste in luxury homes as he did in ships.

She crossed the room and grabbed her phone, sending a message to Jack in reply.

' _Morning :). I found your dresser. Until I get around to buying some clothes (later today, probably), I have taken the liberty of wearing yours again. See you when you get back.'_

' _I don't mind. Chris is there somewhere, I'm sure he will come up to talk to you at some point. He is most likely monkeying around in the basement.'_

' _Any idea when you will be back?'_

' _Not sure, why, miss me?'_

' _No. (Maybe).'_

' _Haha. Probably around 2 or 3.'_

' _Ok, see you then. I found the Pearl, by the way.'_

' _Funnily enough, that wasn't built for me. I found it in an antique store. It's pretty close though, isn't it?'_

' _It is.'_

Sliding the phone into her pocket, she swung open the door to the rest of the house. It opened into another hexagonal space that had another set of double doors off to the right, a longer hallway to the left, and a set of stairs in the middle, presumably going to the basement. She took the right path and ended up in the front area of the house.

The kitchen was to the right of the room and occupied the entire side. Handsome black marble counters, a glass and steel kitchen table, and top of the line appliances. It also had a high ceiling, much like the rest of the house. The black hardwood covered the entire floor as well, along with black brick walls around the kitchen table. The kitchen itself had a mural painting of various gods and goddesses from different mythologies, all done in muted colors.

To the left was the living room, a fancy space with black leather couches and a silver stainless steel coffee table. A projector was evidently Jack's TV there.

"Not sure why Jack has such a fancy kitchen. The guy can't cook worth a shit," came a voice from behind her.

She spun around to find herself staring at what looked like a young Clint Eastwood with light blonde curly hair pulled back into a low short ponytail.

"...You must be Chris," she said slowly, pointing an awkward finger at him.

"And you're Elizabeth, or Lizzie, as you're more commonly referred to."

"Jack talked about me?"

"Yeah, once in awhile, but we never saw a picture of you. I only knew who you were because of the way he talked about you."

"...What do you mean?"

"Well, you are the only person that we know of that would be allowed into his bedroom, let alone staying the night,  _and_ being left alone without him in there."

"...Oh…"

"Yeah...Jack doesn't trust easily," he said, taking a sip of the drink that he was holding. "You probably already know that. I actually can't remember the last time he brought a girl home. Generally...well, his car is good enough."

She tried very hard to not mentally turn her nose up at any girls that had been in Jack's car but failed miserably.

"So you already knew I was going to be here?"

"I suspected. Shawn was too drunk last night to put two and two together. Shawn is-"

"Jack's mechanic. He told me."

"Yeah. Jack told both of us that we were not allowed to come to the house until this morning. My suspicions about you were confirmed when I caught Jack gathering a pile of clothes in front of the door, and were further confirmed when I saw him quietly shutting the door of his bedroom after that."

She made a face of embarrassment, turning around to occupy herself with finding something to eat.

"What...exactly did he tell you about me?" she asked over her shoulder.

"That you were a bit of a spitfire, you really like knives, you were the only person that he knew that had a skill level to equal his, and you really know how to break a man's heart."

She almost dropped the bowl she was holding.

"He said  _what_?"

He had a look of regret on his face as though he had said too much already, but continued on anyway.

"...He told us about '73 when you put him in jail. He spent four years there, ya know. Not sure he ever fully recovered from it. Not jail, he can handle jail. Its just...I'm not sure he expected that from you."

Her grip on the bowl became almost painful, the color draining from her face, stomach churning,  _so dizzy..._

_Jack was in jail?_

_Four years?_

Can't throw up on the kitchen counter,  _fuck, felt sick...can't throw up...breathe, breathe..._

She ripped the French Toast Crunch off of the shelf in annoyance, pouring it in the bowl.

"I was never sure if I was more than a fuck buddy or a partner in crime anyway, so I wasn't aware that I had the power to do that."

"What, break his heart? Oh, I'm not even sure if he really meant that anyway. It's hard to tell with Jack whether he is being real or not."

The cereal nearly sloshed out of the bowl as she crossed the room to the kitchen table.

"Though, like I said," he continued following her to the chair next to her, "you are the first girl that has slept in his bed. That has to count for something, yeah?"

"Yeah...I guess. Just...being involved with Jack turns my emotions into a clusterfuck sometimes," she mumbled after she had finished chewing.

"I can imagine," he replied, laughing. "I  _can_ promise you that he sees you as more than a fuck buddy though at least."

"And how can you promise that?"

"Elizabeth, Jack wouldn't slaughter a prison full of Russians for just anyone."

She stared at him, really stared at him, and realized that he knew more than he should know.

He sighed. "Yes, just to get the awkwardness out of the way right now, Jack told me and Shawn about his real history. We heard snippets about you, but he kept you out of any stories he told, mostly."

Ringa knew too, she supposed. It would be hard to explain the lack of aging to anyone that stuck around for more than a few years.

"Ah." She paused, desperate to steer the conversation away from whether or not Jack had feelings for her. "How did you meet him?"

He got up to pull a box of blueberry waffles out of the freezer. "He...rescued me when I was 15, in '97. I was involved in some pretty heavy drug use, and he was on a job in Minneapolis when he stumbled upon the drug den where I was staying at the time."

"He rescued a random teenager?"

"No, not exactly. I threatened to kill him just because he was invading on my coke-induced psychosis."

"Sorry, I still don't follow. Threatening Jack doesn't end in someone being rescued."

"You don't have to tell me that, and he probably would have killed me, but instead he took pity on me."

"Yeah, once again, not following."

He hesitated, as though whatever he was going to say next was supposed to be a secret.

"If he finds out that I told you this, you had better protect me from him."

She twitched her head in agreement, though she wondered if she  _could_. She had never actually seriously engaged Jack in any kind of physical fight.

"Between '77 and '78, Jack was a...well, he was a bit of an addict himself."

Stopping mid-chew, her eyes widened.

"Mostly heroin and coke. Never did get him to tell me why," he added quickly, extracting his waffles from the toaster and throwing them on a plate. "I guess he had remembered how fucked up he had been, and through some miracle, decided that it was his duty to save at least one person from the same fate."

The cereal was hard to swallow as she forced it down her throat. Jack had been addicted to drugs? And only a few years after they had lost contact…

"So he got you into recovery, and then hired you?"

The plate clattered when it hit the table as he sat down, nearly sending one of the waffles onto the floor.

"Oh, fuck no, it wasn't that quick. I helped him on a few jobs once I sobered up. He was impressed by how well I did. Then he sent me on a few solos, and once again, he was impressed that I didn't fuck them up.  _Then_ he hired me."

"And you have been with him since?"

"Yep. So you need to get some clothes and things, right?"

He was obviously trying to change the subject, most likely so he didn't accidentally reveal anything else to her.

"Yes, clothes and some...things."

"I'll take you if you want. There is a shopping mall about five-ish minutes from here. I can show you the basement too since we have to go down there to get to the garage."

She swallowed the last bite of her cereal, and got up to pour the milk down the drain and put the bowl in the sink, his plate following right after. There was still a waffle clutched in his hand as he led her down the stairs after she made a quick detour to grab the keys that Jack had left on the nightstand.

"Generally, if Jack isn't sleeping or gone, he's down here."

They emerged into a room that immediately explained why. There was another set of couches to the left, with several video game consoles hooked up to the TV on the wall, and there was an elaborate computer setup behind them in the right corner.

The floor was covered in black linoleum, and the walls were a plain gray color, with a handful of posters scattered about. He also had a big shelf next to the TV that housed all of his video games and movies. To the right was a collection of guitars and amps, along with a drum set in the back corner. There was also a door just behind them. Another bedroom, she guessed.

"What sort of games does he play?"

"Depends on his mood. If he's pissy, he'll slaughter a bunch of people in CoD, if he's more mellow, he goes for something like Skyrim or the Witcher."

The image of Jack cursing at the TV during an intense deathmatch got a laugh out of her. After letting her look through Jack's movie collection for a second, he pointed at the door beyond the two couches.

"The garage is through here, come on."

Following him through, she stopped and just stared at what sat before her.

Seven cars were all parked neatly into spaces. Seven cars that she was immediately itching to steal, but knew that Jack would probably poison his own breakfast before he let her do that.

The first two were a Shelby Cobra and a 1973 red Corvette Stingray. Just behind those, and these were particularly beautiful, were a deep bronze Saleen S7 and a black 1970 Dodge Challenger. He also had a black custom Chevy Silverado, a dark green 1998 Dodge Viper, and a deep red 2017 Maserati GranTurismo.

"Once that beautiful McLaren arrives, it will be taking the eighth spot."

"That  _was_ a beautiful car," she responded, mashing the button on the keys to see which one Jack had borrowed to her. The lights on the Maserati lit up.

"Well, I guess we are driving Italian today," he said, heading over to the car. "This is his newest, besides the McLaren. Not sure if he likes it though."

"Why?"

"He always complains about how 'the fucking seat has a stupid fucking angle'."

When she raised her eyebrow at him slowly, Chris laughed, shrugging his shoulders.

"I don't know, he is real picky about cars. He walked in a few months ago babbling about a silver Roadrunner that he really wanted, probably to replace this."

Her face grew red with annoyance.

" _Yeah_ , I'm sure he did. I'm sure he also forgot to mention that it was  _my_ Roadrunner in  _my_ fucking garage that he  _fucking_ broke into."

"...Oh. Yeah...he left that detail out," he said as they both sat down. The car roared to life when he turned the key, the headlights refracting off of the Silverado in front of them. "What all do you need again?"

"A handful of outfits, some sleepwear, some...undergarments, perhaps some makeup, and the bathroom necessities."

"Cool, I will just park in the general mall parking, and we can walk from there."

They pulled out of the garage, and she tried to get as much of a look at the outside of the house as possible. There was a roundabout piece of driveway in front of the door, with a statue of…

"Is that  _Poseidon_?"

"Yeah, he bought that at an auction in London, actually. One of the few things he  _has_ bought on this property, with the exception of the house and furnishings, one car, and his media collection."

She guessed that by 'bought' she meant that he sent Chris to go buy it for him with a big wad of cash and instructions to not bother coming back if it got chipped or cracked.

There was a stretch of forest to the right of the house. The pool was in the back, she supposed. Once they turned onto the main road, she switched on the radio and found that it was set to play the music on the little USB stick that was plugged into the slot in the console.

 _Iron Maiden's_  Number of the Beast started with the incredibly recognizable opening speech by Bruce Dickinson.

' _Woe to you, oh earth and sea_

_For the Devil sends the beast with wrath_

_Because he knows the time is short_

_Let him who hath understanding_

_Reckon the number of the beast_

_For it is a human number_

_Its number is six hundred and sixty-six'_

"This is one of his favorite bands. He plays them non-stop when he is in the garage."

"He told me that too."

* * *

They sat in silence for the ten minutes that it took to get to the mall. Chris dutifully walked around with her as she flitted in and out of stores as quickly as possible, with bags of clothes that contained a nice casual women's suit, nine outfits, sets of socks and knickers to go with them, a few sets of sleepwear, and all of the hygiene products she would need. Just before they got back in the car, she spied a specialty lingerie shop, and it took about thirty seconds to decide that she wanted to go in, with Chris snickering at her in the background.

" _What?_ " she snapped, the rare British sun shining in her eyes.

She was constantly reminding herself that she had just met him, but they got on well enough to let her feel at ease with him anyway.

"I'm surprised. Jack has never been one for a showgirl. He hates strip clubs."

"You just have to  _do it_ the right way for him," she snapped again, and then realized what she had said, blushing furiously.

It wasn't about how much skin you could show, or how many times your tits bounced, or how much you wiggled your ass. It was about engaging the person's mind, entrancing them in the curve of your body, having  _power_  over them with over every movement you made. Jack liked a striptease to be more of a sensual intellectual battle over a raunchy thing.

"Uh huh. I will be out here I guess."

She glared at him and headed inside the shop. It was a quaint little space with black cloth hanging like a circus tent from the ceiling, and the walls were covered in random painted art. She immediately spotted an area with lacy black lingerie and searched through the collection when a sales associate surprised her.

"Looking for something special?"

"Oh! Um, yeah, I guess. I just...got back together with my ex, and I wanted to give him a little surprise."

_Good lord._

"Ah, black, yes. Black is the best color for seduction. I would recommend this set."

She pointed at a pair of intricate lace knickers. "If I may ask-I ask all customers this-can I see a picture of him?"

"...Why?"

"Seeing a person helps me get a better idea of them."

"...Um, alright, I guess."

She pulled out her phone and scrolled to a picture of Jack that she had taken just as they had finished their sandwiches at Subway. Passing the phone over, she watched as the woman's eyes widened.

"You  _left_ this man?" the woman asked, glancing at her incredulously.

"Um,  _no,_ we sort of left each other. At the same time."

"Well, if I could give you advice, don't do that again. It isn't often that I come across a man that looks like  _that._ Dark hair, dark eyes, lovely skin, and he has a dark aura too.  _Sexy_."

" _Yes,_ he is," she replied without thinking. Well, it certainly wasn't a lie. Far from it.

"I am sure that he will be very... _pleased_  with your purchase."

She brought it to the register and paid, thanking her, and left with the bag clutched in her hand. Chris was eyeing it when she closed the car door.

"Don't you  _dare_ say a word about it. Especially not to Jack."

"I wouldn't  _dare_ ruin your surprise, don't worry."

* * *

They pulled back into the garage at 1:45.

She hauled all of her bags upstairs and found an empty shelf in the closet to put all of her clothes in. She wrapped the lingerie in one of the outfits and prayed that Jack wouldn't find it. Crossing the room to the bathroom, she shoved all of her accouterments into one of the cupboards. Once she was satisfied with where everything was, she headed back downstairs and crashed right into something as soon as she reached the kitchen.

" _Fucking_ watch where you're going!" she shouted.

Her head spun for a moment until she righted herself, her eyes landing on what it was that she had collided with. Another guy, apparently.

"Chris, since when do you bring home girls?" he shouted across the room. "You wouldn't mind having a go with me would you?" he asked, looking back at her suggestively.

_What the fuck?_

" _Excuse_  me?"

"Ah, nevermind, you are a one-guy-at-a-time kind of slag."

"I'm sorry," she started, barely reigning in her sudden burst of anger, "are you suggesting that I am a  _prostitute_?"

Chris made it over to them just in time to hear that, and he froze, staring at the newcomer like he had lost his mind.

"...Shawn…"

"What? What's the big deal? Why are you two…"

He stopped talking, his words tittering out like a dying engine. A slow look of horror passed over his face, as though he was putting it together, the gears finally turning in his head.

"Shawn," Chris said again, "this is Elizabeth. She's Jack's, and you had better hope to god that he doesn't find out that you just accused her of being a-"

That hope died when Jack walked through the door just in time to hear the tail end of the sentence. The look on Shawn's face screamed ' _oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck_ ', and Chris looked like he was debating whether he wanted to sign Shawn's death sentence or not. She watched Jack look between the two of them, and then he briefly made eye contact with her, before narrowing his eyes at Shawn, who was shaking, trembling, looking very much like he might just sprint out of the house.

"Is someone going to tell me what is going on?"

"Ah...well-"

She cut Chris off, not caring about how pissed Jack was going to be.

"Your  _friend_  called me a whore and asked if I wanted to fuck him."

A second passed, and that was all Jack evidently needed to process exactly what had transpired. His face turned dark with anger when he crossed the room to look Shawn directly in the eyes, making sure he was paying attention. Every single syllable was as clear as breaking glass.

"Jack-" Chris tried to interject, but the poisonous glance that Jack shot him silenced him.

"You were shitfaced last night, I realize that, so I am going to let this slide. But I am also only going to tell you this one fucking time. You disrespect her again, you even  _think_ of doing that shit again...I will shove you in the trunk of my Maserati and set it on fire. Is that clear?"

Shawn made a strangled noise in his throat that sounded like some kind of agreement, accompanied by a frantic jerking of his head. After watching him for a second longer, Jack appeared satisfied, some of the anger leaving his eyes.

An awkward silence grew between the three of them as they watched Jack rummage through the kitchen.

"...Just go find something to do in the basement, let him cool off for a second." Shawn nodded at Chris, sending one more wary glance at Jack, before practically throwing himself down the stairs.

The anger was rapidly leaving her, being replaced by something that bordered on amusement. "Well, I didn't expect that meeting to play out like that," she said, fidgeting with the strings on her track pants.

"It's partially my fault, I should have told him again this morning about you when he didn't have several bottles of Jack Daniels in him," Jack said around the hot dog that he was currently chewing. "But he won't fuck up again."

" _Yes_ , being told that you'll be burned alive will do that," she muttered, smirking at Jack.

"So, you took my girl out for a joyride, huh? You sure you didn't try to make a pass at her too?"

 _His girl_?

Chris looked around at Jack like he was crazy. "Yeah, I totally ripped all of her clothes off and showed her how a real man fucks. You might want to clean off the seat of the Maserati."

Jack nearly choked on his food, though whether it was from shock or laughter, neither of them could tell.

"Do  _you_ wanna get shoved in the trunk too?" but instead of anger, there was a connection between them, a kind of brotherly love-hate thing.

"I  _dunno_ , luxury car trunks are probably pretty comfortable-"

"Go fuckin' monkey with your computer or something."

Chris disappeared down the stairs, cackling.

* * *

She leaned against the counter as Jack scrolled through his phone.

"What all did you guys do?" he asked without looking up.

A pang of guilt shot through her when she realized that she had to hide things from him.

"I just bought clothes and some other things."

"Didn't talk about anything interesting?"

_Fuck._

"...Um, no, not really. Just about how you apparently complain about your quarter-of-a-million-dollars Italian luxury car, how you can't cook, and how you like to cool off by playing deathmatches."

"I hate the angle of the seat. Don't ask me why, because I don't know."

"It reminds me of when you complained about the headlights and taillights on that Lamborghini you had in...what was it, '64?"

"Yeah, the Miura. The headlights made it look like a bug that was always staring at me. And it was  _yellow_."

"What's wrong with yellow?"

"...It's ugly," he said as though it was a fact that everyone knew.

"You're ugly," she shot back, giggling, getting a look of playful annoyance in return. "So, Chris said you actually bought one of the cars in your garage?"

"Yeah, the Silverado, and I only bought it because I wanted to customize it myself."

Only then did he look up fully, taking in how his black shirt hugged her curves as she leaned back against the black marble. She watched his face, pinpointing the exact moment when his phone was effectively abandoned, sliding onto the counter, as he stepped up to press his body to hers, winding his arms around her.

"My clothes look good on you," he said, kissing her neck.

"Jack, Chris and Shawn are right downst-"

"The bedroom, then?"

"We should probably look into the case that we were hired for-"

"Later."

When he pressed his mouth to hers all of her excuses, not that she had any more, vanished. He pulled away after a few moments. "I missed you, darling."

 _God_ , why did he have to do that? Act like he loved her, act like this was all more than a very close friends-with-benefits thing, but refuse to actually say that it was more?

" _Your_ girl?" she questioned, a pointed look on her face.

"...Figure of speech, love."

_Really?_

"I'm going to take a nap," she announced, giving him a light kiss, trying to bury the guilt she felt from lying to him and the frustration she felt from him...well, just being  _him_. Brushing past him, she missed when he rubbed his hand across his forehead in frustration _._ But it was gone a second later, and he smirked in the direction of the bedroom, snatching his phone back up to order pizza.


	6. More Reasonable People

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 6! Hope everyone enjoys this one! :)

September 9th, Wednesday Evening, 7:00 PM

* * *

She drifted in and out of sleep to the point where she was no longer sure what was actually happening and what was just a conjuration of her brain. Images of fights between her and Jack flitted around, disagreements that they had never resolved, buried in the back of her head just waiting to come out at a time when she felt as though she was in the middle of a brewing crisis. Half-dreams, the kind that exists in that thin membrane between sleep and alertness, the kind that you honestly believe are real until you open your eyes, were torturing her.

The room felt very empty, almost as if she was the only human on the planet, alone to wallow in the result of her nearly three-century span of dutifully trying to ignore everything that bothered her when it came to him.

_A figure of speech?_

She was too strong, too smart to let little things like that bother her, but that was the way it had always been. They had always danced around what seemed like an elephant in the room, a big pink elephant with 'you two are fucking ridiculous and stupid' painted on it.

Perhaps they were afraid of being wrong, afraid of something changing, or perhaps breaching the subject would open the dam of all of the other shit that they had buried. More reasonable people might just inquire if perhaps the other person wanted a committed relationship, might just ask if they could maybe talk about some things, but those people also wouldn't chain the person they love to a ship mast or get them thrown in jail for four years.  _Among other things_.

Most people couldn't even begin to fathom the complexity of their relationship, but there was a niggling voice in the back of her head, always constant, and most likely always right, that told her time and time again that it was only complex because the two of them were making it so, and if they just opened their eyes, really opened them, it would become really simple, like Romeo and Juliet.  _They_  knew instantly that they were in love with each other, and they confessed it as though it was a sure truth along the same lines as the sky being blue.

That voice also reminded her, a bit more bluntly, that she had spent almost three hundred fucking years pussyfooting around something that could be solved with a simple question. She supposed the phrase 'ignorance is bliss' applied here, but she wanted to tell whoever came up with that phrase that it was complete bullshit, because, in fact, ignorance was only letting everything fester in your head until it decides to grow its own consciousness and crawl out, taking some of your brain matter with it.

Being away from him for 44 years had sent what was normally just a constant dull buzz of insecurity and anxiety about their relationship into fucking hyperdrive the moment he walked back into her life, and this fucking waste of time nap that left her feeling more like a zombie with too many emotions than a refreshed well-rested woman ready to seize the rest of the day was  _not_ helping.

 _Why_ the  _fuck_ had it been that long? Nothing fueled the fire of her rumination quite like the man she loved vanishing from her orbit for almost half a century. She had an entire plethora of thoughts, kind of like an inner journal that served as her sounding board lately for what was perhaps going on in Jack's mind.

She had led the cops to him, sure, but she had no idea that he was going to end up in prison for four years, and god help her if she didn't feel a fresh dump of guilt over it. That would account for some of the time that he spent being away, and now she had an inkling of why he hadn't spoken to her for a few years after that, but she would have expected him to at least call her up and say 'hey, I know you got me thrown in the can, and I am still kind of pissed about it, but wanna like...get together or something?'.

But  _nothing_ , until the hotel room, which was rather out of the blue, when she was just starting to really accept that he wasn't coming back to her. She knew Jack was perhaps one of the most complex entities on the planet, but even she couldn't piece together clear reasons as to why he would have waited so long. She supposed that it was a more focused version of the 'innocent bystander effect' which suggests that 'someone else will do it'.

She always figured Jack would call, or come by, or  _something_ , and instead of picking up the phone and calling him, or looking up his address, she had just assumed that he had finally moved on.

Sometimes she blew things out of proportion, sometimes she let herself get too dramatic about things. Sometimes she couldn't adequately express how frustrated she was with herself. She just wanted him to be  _hers_ , and  _only_ hers so goddamn badly that she was almost positive that it was never going to happen, that talking about it would only fuck it up, or that it would fuck itself up soon enough if it actually came to be.

Which led her to the decision, right there, in Jack's bed, that she needed to fucking say  _something_ to him, otherwise she was going to explode. Nevermind the fucking consequences.

Nevermind if he instantly threw his walls up and refused to even talk about it, or if he had also just kept burying everything about  _her_ that bothered him, and her asking to talk opened  _those_ floodgates.

Her resolve almost crumbled when his door opened. Pretending to still be asleep, with her face buried in the pillow, she tried to calm her racing heart down, tried to persuade her idiot brain that this was all just an overblown product of her own stubbornness, but when faced with the reality that she was really about to ask  _Jack_ if he loved her, it suddenly seemed a lot more difficult.

Lifting her head slightly, she realized that she had been laying there for almost four hours. It was around seven now, and the sun was starting to go down as evidenced by the warm orange glow that filtered into the room through the window by the sitting area. She could hear him moving around and just waited like a kid that was trying to fake being sick for him to come over and talk to her. But then the shower turned on, and she felt like someone who was going to have to keep holding their breath for longer than they were able.

She felt at that moment how people stuck in caves must feel, with a ton of rock on top of them and no guarantee of escape from the weight that hung over them. She took several deep breaths and rehearsed what she wanted to say to him, and then gave up because there was literally nothing she could do to think of something reasonable to say. Sitting up, dragging her hand through her hair, trying to rub a growing headache away, she tensed when the bathroom door opened.

She sat there like a statue, unable to turn around.

"'Lo, Lizzie. Good nap?" he asked, walking past her in a  _very_ loose towel, which he slid off in the very next moment, making her forget how her voice worked for a second.

When she didn't answer, he glanced over his shoulder.

"Still sleeping?"

She shrugged, the kind of shrug that people do when they don't want to say anything, but they want the other person to keep asking them to talk.

"Something bothering you?"

_Yes. Everything._

It was always terrible knowing that you are going to ruin the mood, ruin the lightness of the moment, especially when she had just gotten him back. She had enjoyed the last couple of days immensely, and she wished she would have reminded herself to enjoy them while they  _lasted_.

"...Just, um...something Chris said…" she mumbled, staring down into her lap.

She could see his guard going up, could see the second he became wary. He pulled on a pair of black gym shorts and a black tank top, ruffling his hand through his hair, and she swore that she detected a bit of nervousness from him.

" _Fuck_ ," he muttered into his hand, so quietly that she barely heard him. "Well?"

"... _Four_ years, Jack?"

"Four years what?"

" _Prison_. '73 to '77."

A look of remembrance passed over his face, his eyes went far away for a moment, and then he snapped back, and glared at her.

"Yeah, what about it?"

"Were you ever going to tell me?"

"I don't know, maybe. Do we have to talk about it right now? We have this case and-"

"We do have to talk about it now. We have to talk about a lot of things."

He snatched his cigarettes off of the top of the dresser, lighting one up.

"Lizzie, it's been two days. Think we could enjoy each other's company a little bit longer before dredging up the past?"

" _No_ , because we never actually talk about anything. We just ignore it and hope it goes away."

"You led the cops to me, I got arrested, I spent four years in the can, not for lack of trying to get out mind you, and then I was released. What else is there to talk about?"

"I didn't  _know_...didn't  _intend_  on that happening."

"Yeah, well it did. No use feeling sorry for it."

She could tell that he wanted to end the conversation there.

"Why didn't you hunt me down after you got out?"

" _Dammit,_ love-"

" _Answer_  the question."

"Because I was  _fucking_ pissed at you, alright? So pissed, in fact, that I drowned myself in heroin for a year afterward."

"...I know."

A beat went by where the room went silent, the only sound being Jack's angered breathing.

"For fuck's sake, so he told you that too?"

"Well,  _you_  were never going to."

"I didn't think it was something that you needed to know."

She couldn't imagine how many things he didn't think she needed to know, but might, in fact, help a lot of things if she  _did_ know.

"So this is a trust thing now? You don't trust me?"

"Lizzie, you know that isn't true."

"Then  _why_ did you stay away for 39 years?" she shouted at him, surprised by the volume of her own voice.

"You literally got me thrown in jail. For four years. I spent the year after that so fucking high that I barely knew my own name. What did you suppose I expected when I got sober again?"

He waited for her to answer, and when she said nothing, he rolled his eyes.

"...maybe an apology? Maybe just a quick phone call? 'Hey, sorry for making you waste four years of your life'."

"I didn't even know that you were in jail that long! I thought you wanted  _me_ out of your life. When you didn't try to contact me with some smart-ass story about how you escaped, I assumed that it was on purpose. That you wanted me gone."

He pushed a heavy breath out of his nose in frustration.

"Why do you think I got addicted to heroin? Hm?"

"You just told me-"

"No, I didn't. So why?"

"I don't know," she said, flinging her hands up in exasperation.

"Because I  _hated_  being angry with you, and I  _was_  angry when I got released. I had half a mind to torch your house or crash one of your cars, but I didn't  _want_  to be angry with you, so I stopped feeling, well,  _everything_ , for awhile."

"You could have tried talking to me instead of turning to drugs."

"I just said that I was  _pissed_ , Lizzie. I am not exactly a nice reasonable person when I am pissed. Besides, like I already said, you gave me no indication that you wanted me back around. I'm not a mind reader, love."

She buried her face in her hands, starting to feel the anger seep into her forehead, making her skin feel hot.

"Are we just going to forget the fact that you tried to steal my car?"

His shoulders dropped in frustration as he mimicked her, hiding his face in his hands in frustration.

"Did you want to fight? Is that what this is about?"

" _No._  I just want to stop this...this  _fantasy_ that we both live in all the time where we have no problems between the two of us."

"So you do want to argue with me. Bringing all of that shit up is just going to piss us both off."

"It wouldn't if we just talked about it when it happened!" she countered, glancing up.

" _Kind_ of hard to do when you are staring at bars in a jail cell, Lizzie."

"I'm  _sorry_ , okay?  _Fuck…_ "

She could feel the prickling in her eyes, the pounding in her head, and then her vision got blurry because she just couldn't stop the tears from flooding her eyes. But she would be  _damned_ if she let him see them.

Had she been looking at him, she would have seen the anger vanish from his eyes a moment later.

A rush of air whooshed past her when he knelt down in front of her, taking her hands in his.

"Lizzie-"

She shook her head like a petulant child.

"Lizzie, look at me," he said softly as he gently pried her hands away from her face. She let him, but she still directed her gaze elsewhere.

"I was stupid to be as angry as I was, but sometimes I don't act the way I should. My pride, I'll admit, can be a piece of shit."

"That doesn't excuse the fact that you left me for so long…" she said, her voice quivering despite her attempts to control it.

"I know," he whispered back, wiping the tears off of her cheeks. Climbing into bed with her, he scooted back against the headboard, tugging her, gathering her into his arms so that she was sitting on his lap facing him. She pushed her face into the crook of his neck, winding her left arm around him, the feel of his heartbeat against her soothing her nerves.

Her tears were like kryptonite to him, the moment he knew of their existence, there was nothing he could do about it; any anger he felt wilted like a dying flower.

"We can get better Lizzie," he muttered, playing with her hair.

"Never leave me like that again,  _ever_. For any reason."

* * *

They stayed like that for awhile, and she had half a mind to go back to sleep there, with her face nestled into his shoulder.

She hadn't asked him what she wanted to ask him, but she no longer carried the guilt around from lying to him about the things that Chris had told her.

She wasn't even sure why she needed to hear him confirm it so bad. It just felt like a milestone to her, some kind of  _next step_. Something to ease the doubting, the questioning that her mind tortured her with.

Whenever he was being calm and...almost tender like this, it always made her think of her first time with him, so long ago.

It had been one night in Shipwreck Cove, after Will had made off with the Dutchman, accepting his new duty. Jack had been staying there for a week to stock the  _Pearl_  up with supplies, and she had generously offered lodging in her quarters.

The burning, the longing that she had felt for him had crystallized, turned into something so sharp that she couldn't hold out any longer. She had needed to  _see_ him,  _feel_ him, surround herself with him. The only course of action that she had been able to think of at the time was to march down to the council room where he had just been talking to his father, and practically drag him back to her bed. Once he caught onto what she was doing, he had gone very willingly.

Once they had made it there, they had taken their time to explore each other, quite unlike how she thought it would have gone. He had treated her like the king she was, had given her control of everything, and she had relished it, having Captain Jack Sparrow, Pirate Lord of the Caribbean, at her tender mercy.

She had discovered exactly how beautiful he was with his bronze skin and his myriad of tattoos and scars, and he had told her over and over again how  _beautiful_  he found her to be.

For some ungodly reason, before that, she had harbored a fear in the back of her mind that despite all evidence pointing otherwise, he wouldn't know how to handle a virgin. The panic-centric part of her had worried that he would be too rough, or too interested in his own pleasure.

But every single fear had been blown out of the water, never to come back. He had taken her so carefully, so wonderfully, that she had actually felt her heart leave her body to ascend into some other realm. Just the feeling of him inside her,  _finally_ , after so much longing, had made it all worth it. And after that, she had nursed a nearly insatiable hunger for him, one that only burned brighter each time. He had expanded her world, had shown her things that had her revisiting her definition of pleasure, and she had learned how to pleasure him, too.

He liked pain, but not a lot of it, and only once in awhile. A little nibble here and there, a little bit too much pressure with her nails. He refused to be tied up in any kind of manner, but he didn't mind a blindfold. And her  _mouth_ , when it was wrapped around his cock, his beautiful hands bunched in her hair, guiding her rhythm, whispering curses at her that made her blush, made him absolutely wild. She reveled in the ability to give him that, to carry him to those heights.

They had an intimate natural understanding of each other's bodies, perhaps more than anyone else in the world.

* * *

She tugged on his tank top.

"Hm?"

Lifting her head to look at him, she marveled at the softness in his eyes.

"I need you."

It only took a second for her meaning to register with him.

"I'm yours, love," he answered, giving her a crooked smile.

She pulled his shirt off, appreciating the way his hair fell around his shoulders in messy uneven waves, still slightly damp from the shower, and kissed him with both hands cradling his head. It was a different kiss than they normally engaged in, slow and sensual, with the objective to just enjoy the other's presence, rather than fuel the raging fire.

Rocking against him, feeling his growing erection underneath her, she pulled her own shirt off, standing up on the bed for a second to pull the track pants down, tossing them over the edge somewhere. He lifted his hips so she could relieve him of the gym shorts, and smiled softly when she climbed back on top of him, straddling him.

Reaching down to grasp him, she let her hips fall until he was fully sheathed and then stayed still, resting her forehead against his.

Could she just tell him? Could she just throw all caution to the wind and just tell him that she loved him, had always loved him, would never love anyone but him? Feeling him inside her, warm and perfect, really did a number on her reservations.

"What are you thinking about, Lizzie?"

She compared the idea of it to flinging herself off a cliff without knowing whether there was water for her to fall into or not.

"Nothing important," she whispered.

He ran his hands down to splay them across her hips, gently squeezing.

"Come on, 'fess up."

 _You have no idea, Jack_.

"... _Um_ …" She paused, swallowing. "After," she finally said.

_Yes, procrastinate it more. What're a few more minutes when it's already been more than two and a half centuries?_

She rose and fell above him, languidly, not in any hurry to get anywhere, just letting her mind drift away, letting the physical take over. Another squeeze of her hip and she stopped, letting him roll them over, capturing her mouth again when he resumed their rhythm, brushing one hand down her hip, over her leg, caressing her.

After what seemed like an eternity, they both came together, falling into pleasure like a wave gently rolling onto the shore.

He withdrew from her, rolling onto his back, gathering her into his arms again.

"You know you can tell me anything, right?" he asked into the dim room. She nodded against his chest.

"So what's bothering you now then?"

The light needed to be on, she realized. Getting up and walking around the other side of the bed, she flipped the switch and found that he had sat up, giving her a lovely view of his back. That's when she saw it.

It was a new tattoo, sitting just to the left of his right shoulder blade, and just under the line of his neck. She stepped closer to examine it, letting her fingers run over it, feeling him shudder slightly under her touch.

It was a small bird, with its wings expanded, a small splash of water under it.

 _Not just a bird_ , she realized a second later, her heart jumping into her throat.

_A swan._

When she stood there without saying anything for a second too long, he twisted to look at her and found her expression to be one of stunned realization, as though she had just been told the true meaning of life.

"What's that?"

"What's what?"

"That tattoo. The new one."

She wasn't sure what she expected his reaction to be. She thought maybe he would throw his guard back up, or try to lie to her, or some other thing that would throw them off course again.

"It's a swan, love. I got it...I think in like…'83?"

"' _83_ ," she echoed. "What's it for?"

"Tell me what's bothering you first," he said, turning to face her.

"You...you um, you don't have to answer if you don't want, or if…"

He got off the bed, coming to stand in front of her, and planted another tender kiss on her lips.

"What are you nervous about? My fierce, independent Lizzie, you're  _never_ nervous."

"I don't know, just terrified of the answer to what I am about to ask, I guess…"

"Lizzie…"

She had to ask now, had to get it over with, regardless of how she would almost rather drag her own skeleton out of her body through her throat.

"Are...are you in love with me?"

It was as though a great weight had been lifted from her. At first, he didn't quite register what she had said, didn't quite realize the gravity of what she had asked.

But the second time she said it, a new emotion washed over his face, one that she hadn't seen in quite some time. An almost child-like vulnerability.

"I said, are you in love with me?"

She could see all of the pieces fall together in his eyes, the serenity of a lot of demons being banished by her simple question, and she immediately felt incredibly silly for not asking sooner.

" _That's_ what you were worried about?"

The awe and wonder and complete and utter lack of any kind of wall in his voice was beautiful. She had stripped off all of his layers, anything he could possibly hide under with one question.

" _Have_ been worried about, for a long time…"

"You...you thought I  _wasn't_?"

"You never said it, never told me. I wanted it so bad, that I convinced myself it wasn't true…"

"How long?"

"I don't know, since our first time probably, before that even…"

He really stared at her as though he had never seen her before.

"Oh  _Christ_ ," he whispered, pulling her into his arms once again. He held her there, silently, for several minutes, just making sure she knew that he  _was_  there.

"Look at me."

She drew back, daring to do as he asked.

" _Yes_. Do you really suppose I would threaten to murder anyone who even looks at you the wrong way if I wasn't? Do you think I would put myself on Russia's most wanted list as a serial killer if I wasn't? Do you think I would literally get you tattooed on my  _skin_  if I wasn't?"

She shook her head, unable to find her voice since her throat felt like it was trying to strangle itself.

"Hell, I never even so much as touched another woman until after I got out of jail. It had only been you before that. And it was only a few times when I was high, and then another couple of times after that, and I hated it each time."

It was the same for her. She had never had any other men before '73 either, just Jack. She wasn't able to fathom having anyone else before that, and she had also only had a couple of very dissatisfying experiences since then.

"You must think I am pretty silly, huh," she asked, playing with his chest.

"Immensely. But in all seriousness,  _never_ be afraid to tell me anything."

She nodded once, letting his words sink in.

"So...are we…"

"I'm yours, Lizzie, and only yours, if you'll have me."


	7. The Emotional Level

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 7! Hope everyone enjoys :)

September 9th, Wednesday Night, 8:30 PM

* * *

_If she would have him_?

Suddenly, something occurred to her, something that  _should_ have occurred to her a long time ago. She stepped around him and sat down on the bed, offering her hand to him.

He took it, and she tugged him down so that he was sitting in front of her, facing away from her. She pushed his hair out of the way so that she could see the swan tattoo properly. Leaning down to place a kiss on it, she busied herself with examining the rest of his back, re-reading the poem that he had inked.

"Why didn't you ever tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"I don't know, like ' _Hey Lizzie, I love you'_ or something like that? It might have saved us a lot of trouble."

It was as though she had been looking through a foggy window her entire life, and some gracious hand of destiny or fate had generously cleaned it for her. She was almost overwhelmed by how many things she had failed to pick up on when it came to the man in front of her.

He was currently sighing, a low sound that he usually gave when he was going to tell her something personal.

"Lizzie, I thought you  _knew._ "

"Well-"

"And I am horseshit at like... _emotional level_  communication, you know that. There is also the fact that I would almost always rather gouge my own eyes out over making myself vulnerable."

"But-"

" _And_...well, I guess I was always doubtful that the feeling was mutual."

There it was. The realization that she had come to. She knew that she was terrified of being rejected, of having been wrong all that time, but it had taken her until now to understand that he had the same fear of unrequited love.

"So, what you are saying is that we are just both incredibly large idiots?" she asked, grinning, ghosting kisses over his neck.

"Yeah, I feel like we fit the stereotype of the two people in a TV show that obviously love each other, and it's obvious to the plants, animals, toddlers, inanimate objects, friends, enemies, literally  _everyone_ , yet the two people are too stupidly ignorant to see it."

"Only, it's the reverse," she said. "We knew we loved the other person but were in denial that they returned the feeling. And we stretched it out for far longer than we should have…"

"World record, probably. You know, I almost said it to you too many times to count, but I always caught myself for some ungodly unknown reason. My brain can be a paranoid insecure little shit sometimes. Who woulda thunk?"

"Insecure  _probably_ isn't the word that comes to mind when people look at you," she replied, laughing. "And I stopped myself every time I wanted to say it too. And of course, the longer I, or  _we_ , put it off, the bigger the clusterfuck of anxiety became over it."

"Mhm. The time gaps probably didn't help either."

He was right about that. Before '73, they had only been apart at most a year, normally no more than a couple of months. But the separations had  _still_  fueled her insecurities. In the age of digital technology, of course, being apart wasn't terrible because you could Skype, or text, or what-have-you, but before all of that, there was primitive telephones, telegrams, or letters. And they were both far too busy to worry about sitting down to write a letter.

And it was as though the cycle reset itself every time they returned to each other. She didn't have to worry about confessing that she loved him and getting told to fuck off if he wasn't around.

She likened the emotion she was feeling at that moment to a person who is terrified of public speaking right after they had just given a successful speech. The immense relief, the  _lift,_ the scouring of all the built up anxiety and pain and...it was all gone, and she felt  _light_ , like she could do anything.

Scooting closer to him, she laid her forehead against his shoulder.

"Want to know what I was thinking about earlier?"

"Absolutely not."

She snorted at him, circling a hand around to clasp his.

"You're funny. I was thinking about our first time together."

"... _Oh_ ," he said in surprise, as though that wasn't what he was expecting."Why?"

"Did you ever happen to read Harry Potter?"

That was something that she felt a little special knowing. He  _loved_ to read whenever he had an extended period of time to do it.

She giggled when he made a noise of confusion.

"...Um, yeah, all of them. Why?"

"Remember how you had to think of your happiest memory to summon a Patronus?"

"...Mhm…"

"That's what I would think about to summon one. Our first time."

He was quiet for a moment, and she desperately wanted to know what he was thinking.

"You know, you have a special talent for turning me, a guy that can fire a gun with his eyes closed and hit eight out of seven people, into a big pile of mush. I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with it."

"Maybe if you wouldn't have been so perfect that night, I wouldn't have to think about it all the time."

"Well, I mean if we could rewind back, I could be a dick to you instead."

"Shut up," she said, pinching his shoulder.

He turned around, pushing her to lay on her back, and covered her body with his.

"When you quite literally drug me up to your quarters, I had about the same level of euphoria that I had felt when I was first named the captain of the Wicked Wench. You gave me a gift that I wasn't about to make myself undeserving of."

"And now here we are, almost three centuries later, in the midst of automobiles that drive themselves, and computers that talk to you."

He leaned down and kissed her, making tingles go to all the way to her toes.

"Nevermind all of that," he said when he broke away. " _I_ am in the midst of a  _very_ beautiful woman whom I just learned can be rightfully called  _mine_. I think that tops anything else."

"Even though I could slaughter a room full of people with a knife while playing with my phone at the same time, you sure do know how to mush me up too," she giggled, mimicking his earlier statement.

"You don't have to tell me that you can do that.  _I've_ seen you in action, love. Besides having a burning desire for your company, you are the only person on earth that I would feel comfortable working with professionally, besides the guys."

" _Professionally_ , the thief says."

"Hey, I'm not just a thief. Like I mentioned earlier, I'm a serial killer in Russia, an occasional street racer, a weapons aficionado, a car collector, a guitarist, and you could probably make a case for me being Don Juan Demarco too…"

"You think you are the  _greatest_  lover in the world?"

"Are you going to challenge it?" he asked, smiling down at her softly.

_No,_  she found that she couldn't come up with a shred of a counterargument against that.

"Your level of arrogance is endearing."

Her eyes were already getting droopy again, despite the nap she had taken.

"Arrogance? There is a difference between arrogance and just knowing your own skill level."

"Uh huh, whatever you say," she said, yawning. "Let's go to bed. We can actually figure out what the fuck the job is that we were hired to do when we wake up."

He kissed her again and climbed over her to turn the light switch off again. Once her eyes got used to the darkness of the room, and she could see his face semi-well next to her, she decided to exercise her new ability.

"I love you," she whispered at him, a warm rush spreading throughout her. He tugged her closer to him, kissing her forehead, tangling his hand in her hair.

"I love you too, darling."

He said it quietly, like it was a new muscle that needed to be strengthened, but god if it didn't make her feel like he had just injected sunlight into her veins, as sappy as that sounded.

They fell asleep like that, nestled together, just as they had plenty of nights before, but this night was elevated above all the rest.

* * *

She woke rather suddenly, not for any particular reason, feeling refreshed. A surprising thing, since the clock on her phone read 6:15. The sun was just starting to come up, casting a dim orange glow throughout the room. Turning around carefully, she smiled when she saw that Jack was still asleep.

It was a beautiful thing, waking up next to the man you love, especially when the man you love was  _this_   _beautiful_.

Scooting a bit closer, she drew the blanket back, exposing his torso. She hadn't had a chance to get a good look at the tattoo on his chest, above his heart, until now.

It was a dragon, but it wasn't  _just_ a dragon. It was an ouroboros dragon, swallowing itself infinitely. The detail on it was incredibly intricate. She reached out and traced it with her finger, jumping a bit when she heard his sleepy voice.

"You hadn't seen that one before. I forgot."

His eyes were still closed, but he had a soft smile on his face.

"What's it for?"

"Infinity. Immortality, it seemed like an appropriate thing to ink."

"Makes sense," she replied, leaning down to place random kisses on his skin.

"Mmm. C'mere."

She kissed her way up his chest, across his neck, until finally claiming his mouth. When they broke apart, she emitted a breathy little laugh.

"I always liked your tattoos. Though I think your sparrow one might still be my favorite."

"Oh yeah? I like the poem, I think. Do you have any new ones, besides the two?"

She glanced down to her left hand, where she had a small crown inked on the back of her wrist, and a jolly roger flag just under it.

"I actually do have a new one."

She hadn't told him about it yet, and she was grateful that she had put it off until now. Turning around, she pulled her hair out of the way, exposing the back of her neck. Right in the center of her back, between her shoulder blades, was a little sparrow carrying a heart out of a broken cage.

"You showed me what freedom was. I was doodling one day and just sort of came up with it."

His fingertips brushed across it, as though he was unsure of whether it was really there or not.

"Lizzie...I don't..." and then he stopped, opting instead to kiss it, letting his lips linger.

It was bloody marvelous, this thing they had.

"We should probably get out of bed."

He sighed against her, and made a noise of annoyance. They both went in search of clothes, with Jack selecting a fresh pair of gym shorts and a Ramones t-shirt out of his closet. She picked out a pair of loose gray sweatpants and a white t-shirt.

"Ready to find out exactly what kind of shit we are in?" she asked, holding up the USB drive that she had grabbed from the drawer in the nightstand.

"Can't wait."

* * *

They made it out of the bedroom at 6:45. Jack went downstairs for a moment to do something-or-other.

Shawn was standing in the kitchen making coffee when he noticed her walk in. He was giving her a wary look, as though she might pull out a knife and attack him.

Now that she was able to look at him without wanting to knock all of his teeth out, she noticed that he looked like Seth Green in character as Scott Evil from Austin Powers, spiky black hair and annoying attitude completing the look.

"...Um.. _so_ , you're Elizabeth."

"No, I'm actually her evil twin. I moved in early this morning and killed her to take her place."

"...Right. Uh...could I just get this out of the way really quickly? I am real sorry about yesterday. I had a terrible hangover, and already had a couple shots of whiskey in me, so...didn't really think first."

"You don't strike me as the type of person that thinks first about most things," she said, crossing her arms.

"The only time he  _does_ use his brain is when he is under the hood of a car. Lucky for him, because if he fucked up one of my cars, I would really have to kill him," Jack interjected when he came upstairs.

"Well, apology  _accepted_  then, I suppose," she said.

He let out a sigh of relief. "The Mclaren should be here on Saturday. Today's Wednesday, so that makes it," he paused to count on his fingers, "three days. "

"Glad to see that you can still count to ten," Jack said, snickering. "Where's Chris?"

"He's outside, doing...pool shit or something."

Jack pulled his phone out, presumably to text him.

She decided to search the cupboards for something to eat and found a box of strawberry pop tarts.

"So, how did Jack meet  _you_?"

"Uh, it involved him trying to swipe a car from the shop that I was working at, accidentally blowing the shop up, seeing that he had left a witness, and almost killing me before I managed to convince him that I was a car mechanic god."

He paused to finish off his coffee.

"That was hard to do with his Beretta digging into my skull though…"

"...Maybe a bit of an overreaction on my part. I was pissed that I had blown my own car up, and he was unfortunately the closest thing that I could destroy," Jack said without looking up from his phone.

"So, you're telling me that both of you were... _acquired_  through death threats?"

Shawn barked out a laugh just as Chris walked in.

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Shut up for a second," Jack said to the two of them, directing a serious gaze at Chris, who stopped in his path to the kitchen. However, rather than Shawn who looked like he was going to piss himself when Jack confronted him yesterday, Chris stood there calmly, showing no signs of weakness.

"You told her about Wakefield. Why?"

_Wakefield_? That was a high-security prison.

"She wanted to know what you told us about her. I told her that you said she broke your heart," he replied without hesitation.

A very brief flash of sadness took Jack away for a second, and she desperately wanted to erase the memory from his mind.

"And?"

"And then I told her that you spent four years there."

"That's it? Nothing else?"

"Nope."

_There was more?_

"You told her than I was an addict too."

"She asked how I met you. I had to give her some kind of explanation for why you decided to rescue a drugged out fifteen-year-old."

They both stood there, silently contemplating the other.

"...She had  _better_ be the  _only_  damn person you give my personal details out to. And next time, fucking  _ask me_  first," Jack said, and she could see the barest hint of relief in Chris' face. "Go get your laptop."

Chris nodded, disappearing downstairs again.

* * *

They all sat down around the kitchen table, each with a pop tart to munch on.

"First," she started, " _Jack_ , I want you to tell me more about Suzuki, and also who this Handa person is."

" _Sekar Handa_? That's who gave Suzuki the bounty for you?" Shawn interjected, missing his mouth with the pop tart a second later.

"Yeah," Jack replied, his mouth curling in annoyance. " _Suzuki_ is a trained assassin that specializes in killing criminals for other criminals."

"And Handa?"

"An asshole CEO who specializes in making everyone else get their hands dirty for him."

"And why does he want you dead?"

"...I might've... _intercepted_  several things that he hired people to find for him."

"Ah. Yeah, that might piss a person off," she replied, laughing.

Chris fired up his laptop and plugged the USB drive in. They watched the light from the screen flash across his face for a moment as he navigated to the appropriate folder.

"Looks like a note she typed. I'll read it out loud."

* * *

_Two months ago, the Sinaloa Cartel stole something from me, something that will remain undescribed. When I requested its return, they made a deal with me._

_I learned that while some members of the Cartel were on a trip to Japan, the Yakuza murdered a Japanese government official. They framed the Cartel with planted evidence._

_This is the box of evidence that I have asked you to retrieve for me, and it is what I need to give to the Cartel to have my property returned._

_Since this is an international case, the evidence moves around, but for the last couple of weeks it has been housed in Scotland Yard._

_When you have the evidence, return it to me. I trust that you can figure out a way to get it._

_In the meantime, I will contact you once Handa is neutralized._

* * *

He looked around at Jack with a face of slight concern when he finished reading.

"So hold on a fucking minute. This psycho bitch put you in business with the Sinaloa Cartel  _and_ the Yakuza?"

Jack leaned back in his chair, an expression on his face that was a mixture of excitement, annoyance, and intrigue.

"I fucking guess," he said, drumming his fingers on the table. "So, we have to come up with a way to extract that box."

"Ha! Good luck with that, Scotland Yard is next to impossible to get into."

"... _Shawn_. You have the two best thieves working right now sitting at the table with you. I think we can manage it."

"Oh, right, sorry."

"I have had dealings with the Yakuza once or twice. Generally, as long as you don't try to double cross them with anything, they aren't too bad," she said, shrugging.

There had been several jobs that she had taken when she had found out that the thing she was trying to steal originally belonged to a Yakuza member, so rather than return them to her employer for her reward, she returned them to their owners. However, not all of her dealings with them had gone quite like that.

In 2014, there was one incident that involved her threatening a Yakuza higher-up's wife through a rather convoluted series of events, and that member had had it out for her ever since.

"The Yakuza aren't really known for violence, but when they do want to kill someone, they don't fuck around," Chris mused. "Speaking of killing, I forgot that I got a new gun for our armory."

Jack's face lit up like a kid that was just told about Christmas coming early. He pushed his chair back, popped the last bit of pop tart in his mouth, and pointed in the direction of the bedroom.

"Armory? Weapons aficionado indeed," she said behind him as she followed him to the large steel door to the right of the bedroom, Chris and Shawn following behind her.

She watched Jack punch in the code out of habit for memorizing codes and numbers, and he looked over his shoulder at her, smirking.

"Don't bother, I change it every week," he said, smirking wider when she made a face at him.

The door opened to a white room that looked like the United States Military had moved into it, or perhaps the McManus brothers were real people, and had lent Jack their weapons collection. There  _were_ a couple of ropes hanging in the back.

On the right wall, a shitload of guns, on the left wall, a fuckload of guns, and on the back wall, a fuckload of knives.

"And how many of these did you buy?"

Jack barked out a laugh.

"You know me too well, love. Exactly one of these was actually paid for."

"This one," Chris said, holding up a beautifully crafted black SIG P210. He handed it to her, and she noticed that there was a little silver sparrow inlay on the grip.

"Custom made?"

"Yep, payed a pretty penny for it. It's the one I take with me most of the time," Jack said.

"Yeah, the only way anyone would disarm him while he's carrying that is if they pried it from his dead hands," Shawn said from across the room.

She heard Jack say a quiet 'wow' from behind her as she was examining his rifles, and turned around to find him with a rather large sniper rifle in his hands.

"It's a Barret 82A1, military grade rifle. Been wanting one of these for awhile," he explained when he noticed her staring.

Whoever or whatever Jack would be aiming at with that didn't stand a chance. He was lethal behind a sniper rifle, especially when he was providing cover fire for her. There was no way in hell he would let anyone get within 10 feet of her before they had a .50 caliber bullet in the back of their head.

He also had several AK's, a Titanium Gold Desert Eagle, a whole slew of assault rifles, a bunch of pistols, a couple of shotguns, and two tranquilizer guns.

"If you ever need to get in here, love, I have an emergency button in my room that I'll show you that unlocks the door automatically."

He paused to walk over to the area with the pistols, and then selected one, turning to the back right corner where he kept all of the ammunition in an organized drawer unit.

After he loaded it, he handed it to her.

"Here, put this in our room. I have a spot for a pistol attached to the back of the nightstand next to where you sleep."

"What about you?" 

"Me? I have guns hidden all over this house. It would have to be a fucking cyborg to survive for more than 30 seconds if I am in the vicinity. But if I'm not here, for whatever reason, you need to keep that next to you."

Shawn snorted. "One time, this guy that Jack stole a car from thought it would be a good idea to try and do a home invasion here. He brought a couple 'a thugs with him. Big dudes. Prolly thought they could punch him to death or something-"

"Yeah, I remember that." Chris interrupted. "We got here and one had almost an entire AK round in his torso, two of them had bullet holes in their heads, and the main guy was laying on the kitchen table with a knife in his heart. Suffice it to say, no one has tried that since."

Jack put the rifle back on the wall and left the room, the three of them following him out.

"Chris, I need you to make a map of routes with regards to Scotland Yard. Entry routes, exit routes, normal traffic around the area, and we're-in-a-big-fuckin'-hurry routes for a quick escape."

He nodded and disappeared down the stairs to the basement.

"Shawn, you need to find me a floor plan of the place. Make note of doors, fire escapes, and special interest areas."

He also disappeared downstairs.

"Do  _I_ have a job?" she asked him in a playful tone.

"Mhm," he replied, backing her up against the wall. "Your job is to kiss me."

She laughed against his mouth when he did exactly that, his hands disappearing under her shirt. After a few minutes of sensory assault on her person, he broke away.

"How would you feel about going out to dinner tonight?"

"Mmm, if only to see you in a suit again."

"I think you just like taking me  _out_  of a suit, darling."

Then she remembered the lingerie that she had bought. Oh, it would be a  _perfect_ night to surprise him with it.

She followed Jack to the living room and lounged on the couch while he called the restaurant.

"Hello? Hi, I need a table for two later tonight, say 8:30?"

"Great, thanks."

She could wear one of the new dresses she had bought. It was a lovely champagne red pencil dress with a rather plunging neckline.

"In the meantime, Jack, I wouldn't mind slaughtering you in some Mortal Kombat."

He raised an eyebrow at her.

"I saw it on your shelf," she said in a smart-ass tone.

"You're in for a rude awakening if you think you are going to slaughter  _me_ in  _that_."


	8. Fatality and Seduction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 8!
> 
> This chapter features a companion song. It will work much better if you listen to the song while reading the scene (it's the last scene). I do not own Nine Inch Nails or any of their music.
> 
> The song is Closer by NIN. 
> 
> Hope everyone enjoys this one!

September 10th, Thursday Morning, 11 AM

* * *

"Oh, for  _fuck's_  sake!"

This was the tenth goddamn round that he had won, and it was starting to piss her off. Normally she wasn't a sore loser, but with Jack, she always got so competitive.

"Is steam going to start coming out of your ears?"

She looked around at him with a death glare.

"You're cheating," she said with the snottiest voice she could muster. "That was the  _last_ round that you are going to win."

"Cheating? Me?  _Never_."

They were back at the character selection screen. Jack had been using both Raiden and Liu Kang alternatively, while she preferred Sonya Blade and Kitana.

"Fine, prove it. Pick a different character this time."

"If it will prove that I am just better than you, you can even pick my character for me."

" _Better_? You're not  _better_."

"I mean...you haven't won a round yet. I'm sure that if this were reversed, you would be gloating all over me."

" _No_ , I wouldn't."

"Uh huh. You're kinda cute when you get angry, by the way."

"I doubt you'll still think that when you are missing a certain part of your anatomy."

"See? The way you squint your eyes, and your lips get a bit puckered, and your cheeks get red. Cute."

"I'm warning you, Jack…"

"And you like that part of my anatomy far too much for that."

"Says  _who_?"

"Oh, sorry, all those  _hallucinations_  I have had of making you come must have confused me."

"Maybe I fake it."

That was one of the biggest lies she had ever told in her entire life, but she didn't really care at the moment.

"You're a damn good actress then."

No reaction from her when Jack was touching her even  _approached_ anything that could be called acting.

"...I'm not  _cute_."

She wasn't sure if it was the childish tone she used or the pouting expression on her face, but one look at her sent Jack into a fit of laughter, starting out as mild chuckling, before rapidly descending into hysterics every time he glanced at her again.

At the point where he was laughing so hard he stopped making noise, his face buried in the couch throw that he had snatched up, she started laughing too, descending into her own fit of giggles.

Just as Jack was calming down, she had a particularly breath-snatching wheeze of laughter, and on a purely instinctual level, her hand flew out to swat his shoulder in a this-is-all-your-fault gesture.

He tried, he really tried to resist, shaking his head frantically, holding his breath, but nothing worked as he relapsed, tears streaming down his face, his hand holding his stomach, his face back in the blanket. She could hear the garbled versions of curses choking their way out of his throat.

Neither of them even noticed Shawn standing there staring at them in apprehension until he finally said something, the Mortal Kombat menu music playing in the background.

"Are you guys...ok? Need some respirators or something? Maybe a tranquilizer?"

They both made some kind of frantic hand gesture at him, but he couldn't tell what it was that they meant.

"I'm...I'm just going to go out to the garage."

When they didn't even acknowledge him, he awkwardly turned and left, shaking his head.

She eventually crawled over, controller abandoned, and let her laughter peter out into his chest.

"You are cute, Lizzie. And beautiful, smart, charming,  _sexy_...Shall I go on?"

She pushed her face into his shoulder to hide her smile.

* * *

The clock on her phone had said 6:30 when Jack announced that they should take a shower and get ready for dinner. As if she would turn down a chance to get naked with him.

"Stop  _staring_."

Her eyes jerked up from his arse as he kept adjusting the water temperature.

"You like it."

He emitted a velvety chuckle, finally stepping in, her following behind him. She leaned against the right wall, appreciating the view of the water traveling down the ridges and lines of his body. She loved his physique, all lean muscle, and gorgeous bronze skin, and she would never get tired of admiring it.

He tilted his head back and closed his eyes, letting the stream run over his face. While he was distracted, she stepped up to him and wrapped her hand around his cock, smiling at the immediate change of expression on his face.

"Mmm, sometimes I feel like you enjoy touching me more than I enjoy it," he said, smirking at her.

"I wouldn't say  _that_ ," she responded in a low voice as he rapidly grew hard in her hand. He let her push him against the back wall, leaning his head back against it as she firmly stroked, from base to tip, slow and steady.

Making this intelligent _dangerous_  man putty for her was one of the most arousing things in the world.

" _God_ , love," he sighed when she started to alternate her strokes, traveling down his length at different speeds, twisting her hand, running her fingers over the tip on the upstroke, and then he released a breathy moan when her other hand softly massaged his sac. Power rushed through her when he tightened his hand into a fist against the wall.

"Your mouth, dammit,  _please_ ," he pleaded without opening his eyes. His lips were parted, his face slack with pleasure.

Kneeling down, she wrapped a hand around his hip to keep him still as her other hand grasped his cock. The growl that left him when she took the first couple of inches into her mouth sent a wave of heat and moisture straight to her core.

She had never been able to bottom him out, as he was not exactly small, reaching seven inches, but she let him sink in as far she could, dragging her lips slowly back up, a soft litany of curses spilling out of his mouth. Her hand returned to his sac as she kept a steady rhythm, letting her tongue play as she went.

Feeling his body tightening, she increased her speed, stroking him with her other hand where she couldn't reach with her mouth.

When he was close, he always liked to tangle his fingers into her hair, and he had learned long ago that she didn't mind swallowing him, rather enjoyed it even. The first couple of times, he had tried warning her, tried pulling her off of him, but she had swatted his hands away, shushed him, and told him both times that she appreciated him trying to be a gentleman, but she would rather him just shut up.

"Fuck, fuck,  _fuck_ ," he moaned as his breathing grew harsh, gorgeous raw sounds of pleasure bubbling up from his chest.

She sank her mouth down his length as far as it could go, and then sucked, working her tongue around him at the same time, the ache between her legs becoming more uncomfortable the more he unraveled.

" _Lizz-Liz-_ " and then his hand grabbed a fistful of her hair, not hard enough to hurt her, and groaned as he came hard into her mouth, his hips jerking with sporadic thrusts. She took all of him until he finally slumped against the wall, his chest heaving.

"Jesus  _Christ_ , I swear you get better at that every time you do it," he said as he tried to catch his breath. "And that's saying something because you're bloody fantastic."

"I  _aim_  to please."

She wiped her mouth and then planted soft kisses across his chest as he wrapped his arms around her.

"I suppose you want something in return, hm?"

"I mean, I wouldn't  _mind_ ," she replied, shrugging indifferently, as though she wasn't on fire for him.

He reversed them so she was pressed against the wall, lifting her up and wrapping her legs around his waist. He held her there against him, hands curled around her bum as she wound her arms around his neck.

She melted against him as he kissed her tenderly, taking his time, caressing her lips with his. Once he was satisfied that she wasn't going to fall, he trailed his hands up her stomach, stopping to give attention to her breasts, cradling them.

Breaking the kiss, she tangled her hands in his hair and pushed his head towards her neck, earning her an amused chuckle. When he latched onto her pulse point, laving his tongue there, even nipping her a little, she couldn't stand waiting anymore, moving her hand down to her center, rubbing her clit with a sigh of relief.

He stopped what he was doing, and glanced down to watch her, heat pooling in his eyes. She slowed her hand in a question, then smiled when he nudged it.

"Don't stop on my account, love."

She held his gaze as she rubbed her fingers over her folds, dipping them just inside her entrance, then trailing them back up to her clit, rotating around it, alternating between rough strokes and soft strokes. A breathy little moan bubbled up from her throat when she hit just the right spot.

Her fingers moved faster as her eyes slipped closed, her cheeks flushing. A fresh jolt of pleasure made her hips jerk as Jack lifted her up a little more to take one of her nipples in his mouth.

"Oh  _god_ , Jack, I...I can't-"

Sighing gratefully when he replaced her hand with his own, her world quickly narrowed to the moment when he slid two fingers inside of her, his thumb immediately working her clit. She moved her hips against him and clutched at his shoulders as her lips parted.

"You're fucking gorgeous, love," he whispered as he withdrew to play with her folds. Her body tightened, whimpers leaving her mouth with every stroke of his thumb.

" _Jack, I-_ "

She gave up, shaking her head frantically, biting her lip, her hand shooting down to clutch his wrist like it always did just before she came.

"You're almost there, darling," he said, a satisfied smile in his husky voice.

When her hips started to buck against his hand, he took her mouth in a searing kiss, rubbing his thumb across her clit furiously.

Then she  _broke_ , burying her face into his shoulder as white-hot bursts of pleasure threatened to set her blood on fire. He continued touching her, stroking her, until she floated down from that impossible high, her breathing harsh.

He kept her wrapped around him like he always did, but this time, he wound his arms around her and pulled her into him, cradling her head against his chest, and stroked her hair.

She almost melted into a puddle when he said three precious words...well,  _four,_  really.

"I bloody love you," and it came out like he had been waiting, building up to saying it all day.

"I love you too," she said, as that was the only appropriate response.

When she drew back, he had a warmth in his eyes, a kind of contentment that she rarely saw, and it made her give a contented sigh of her own.

"Do you suppose tonight is the last bit of fun we will get to have?"

"Since when were jobs not fun?" he asked, his brow raised.

"I don't know, I have a feeling this one is going to turn into more than just a job."

"Well, if it does go a bit sideways, we'll deal with it."

* * *

She let him get ready first.

When he emerged from the bathroom, her mouth dropped open just a little bit.

He had chosen a navy blue button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and the first two buttons undone, exposing a tantalizing slice of his tan chest. He also had on a fine-fitting pair of black trousers with a silver belt buckle, showing off his slim yet muscular waist.

" _Dashing_."

He smoldered at her, something he was very good at.

"Why  _thank you_ ," he said, crossing the room to spray his cologne on. She was sitting on the bed still in her towel.

"So, which car would you like to take tonight?"

"Hmm, maybe the Saleen?"

"Nice choice."

Drakkar Noir invaded her senses as he stepped over to her, tugging her to her feet. He took her head in his hands and kissed her until she thought she might just rip all of his clothes off again.

When he drew his hands away, he caught the towel on the way down, loosening it just enough for it to fall to the floor.

"You look much better without it," he said, before crossing back over to open the top drawer of his dresser, extracting a small pistol.

"Do you suppose we are going to be attacked?"

He checked it over, making sure it was loaded, before sliding it into the suit jacket that he evidently intended on wearing.

"Normally I just keep one in my car, but you're with me now."

His commitment to protecting her by whatever means necessary made her feel a bit fuzzy inside.

"Go away so I can get ready, Mr. Knight in Shining Armor."

He snorted. "More like the dark guardian angel standing over your shoulder."

The door closed with a click as he disappeared through it.

Once she was in the bathroom, she pulled her maroon dress on and admired the way it hugged her body. She mussed up her hair until it fell around her shoulders in tight waves, and did her eyes with a black smokey look, leaving her lips bare.

The final touch was a sprinkling of gold glitter dust on her cleavage, a spritz of the Dior perfume she had bought, and a pair of black stiletto heels.

Checking herself in one of his wall length mirrors, even she had to admit that she looked hot. Jack was talking to Chris when she left the bedroom, so she lingered in the hallway for a moment to text Ringa.

' _I have some good news.'_

' _Ay, amiga! Spill.'_

' _Jack and I...well, we're...official now.'_

She could picture Ringa squealing on her end.

' _Ya era hora. Magnifico. Any other news? Wedding bells maybe?'_

' _Wedding bells?! I think we are getting a little ahead of ourselves.'_

' _Si Tu lo dices, amiga. When do I get to meet this man of yours?'_

' _Actually, I was going to ask you to pack a bag just in case.'_

' _Oh?'_

' _This job has put us right in the middle of a dispute between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Yakuza.'_

' _Mierda Santa! You sure this is a good idea?'_

' _Jack and I can handle whatever happens, I'm sure. Just make sure you are ready in case I need you here.'_

' _No es un problema. Just say the word.'_

' _Thank you Ringa. Off to dinner with Jack now.'_

' _Oooh, if that man doesn't propose to you at some point, I will eat my own hand. Or make him eat it.'_

' _Haha, we'll see.'_

Chris entered the hallway but stopped in his tracks when he saw her.

" _Wow_ , I have to say, I am a bit jealous of Jack."

"Jealous? Of wh-" Jack started when he walked over, but his words died in his throat as he too saw her, his eyes immediately raking over her body shamelessly.

"I am one  _lucky_ fucking man, aren't I?"

"You two have fun," Chris said, chuckling, shaking his head.

"Shall we?"

She smiled when Jack held his hand out, and then took it, letting him lead her downstairs.

They climbed in the Saleen and pulled out of the garage.

* * *

"So, where is our destination tonight?"

"Bristol, there is an excellent restaurant there called Casamia. It's been awhile, but the owner knows me."

He turned on some music, and she relaxed into the seat.

It took about 45 minutes to get there, the phone displaying 8:15 when they pulled up to the valet. Her heels clicked against the sidewalk as Jack led her through the door. A man in his late 60's with slicked back gray hair looked up from the podium, a smile spreading across his face.

"Jack Sparrow, it has been a long time," he said in a deep voice, coming around to give Jack a one-armed hug.

"Not too long, I hope."

"No, no, of course not. And who is this lovely lady?"

"This is-"

The man cut him off, a look of recognition washing over his face.

"Ah, of course, this must be the fabled Elizabeth."

"And why do you say that?" she asked as Jack fidgeted.

"Well, I can't imagine that Jack would bring any  _other_ woman out to dinner. Oh, excuse me. My name is Christian. I own this lovely establishment."

"Nice to meet you. I am sure Jack only said  _good_ things about me."

"Certainly, certainly. A lot about how beautiful you were, and I can say now that he wasn't exaggerating."

" _Christian,_ a table, please?

The man tutted at Jack and grabbed two menus.

"Fine, impatient I see. Follow me."

They were led through the dim building to a table in the back right corner, a crystal chandelier hanging above it.

"Here we are, I will have a waiter bring out a wine menu in a moment, along with some bread and oil."

After Jack arranged his jacket on the chair, they sat down, Jack on the right, her on the left. The restaurant lighting made him look incredibly alluring, like a...well, like a dark angel.

"I know you tell me that I am beautiful all the time, but did I ever tell you how  _handsome_  you are?"

He gave her a genuine little smile, one that made her insides flutter.

"I think all the staring you do tells me enough."

"Hey, just because I stare at your arse a lot doesn't mean that I think the rest of you looks good."

Christian returned with the menu just then, cutting off Jack's faux pout.

"So, Jack, what will you be treating the lady with tonight?"

He tapped his finger on his lip for a moment before answering.

"Let's do a bottle of the Chateau Lafite, please."

"Ahh, a lovely French red, excellent choice. Our most expensive, but I don't think Jack Sparrow would give the woman he loves anything less."

She knew she was practically beaming, but she also didn't really care at that moment.

Another waiter stepped over and placed a plate of oil and a basket of bread on their table.

"Can I get an order placed for two of you, or would you rather have a few minutes to decide?"

"No need, we'll both have the Pasta and Lamb Ragu."

"Perfect, I'll get that order started for you right away."

* * *

The food looked delicious when it came out, creamy and steaming hot, along with their bottle of wine and two wine glasses.

"You still remember my love affair with pasta, I see," she said, pouring them some.

"Lizzie, you literally begged to take any job that put us in Italy. It's hard to forget."

The first bite she took nearly gave her a food orgasm because  _christ_  was it  _good_. The wine was excellent too. She found Jack staring at her with an amused grin.

"Good? Must be, because you almost made the same face you make when-"

"And how is everything?"

Jack finished the rest of his sentence with a smolder, briefly glancing at the waiter to answer his question.

"Excellent, thank you. Could you bring out a dessert menu as well?"

"Certainly, sir."

"It tastes amazing, seriously," she said as the waiter walked away. "Although I must ask, what made you decide to take me here?"

He had taken her to dinner before, but for some reason, this time felt...different, so she wanted to see what his answer would be.

"Well, I have always been pleased with-"

" _No,_ I mean what made you decide to take me out at all?"

A look of understanding washed over his face.

"Lizzie, that's what a man does for the woman he  _loves_. While I realize that I could show you that I love you just by snuggling you in bed, I think treating you, seeing you happy because of something I gave you, isn't out of the question once in awhile."

_Oh, Jack…_

Thankfully, her sudden burst of emotion was partially saved by the waiter, who had just arrived with the dessert menu.

"I'll take these plates out of the way for you and give you a second to look that over."

"Thank you," she said this time, smiling at the man.

_She was not going to cry._

Besides not wanting her mascara to run all over her face, she didn't feel like dinner was the best place to get weepy.

The menu had three things that she was deliberating between. Chocolate mousse, creme brulee, and chocolate fondue.

"What do you think?" she asked him, hoping he wouldn't notice the blush on her cheeks.

"The fondue, no question. But it doesn't matter what I want. What do  _you_  want?"

Jack really was a sweetheart sometimes, though he would probably never admit to it.

"The fondue sounds lovely."

He relayed their choice to the waiter when he returned, then pulled out his phone.

A few seconds later, her phone buzzed in her little purse. She dug it out, a bit confused, and saw a message from Jack.

' _Wanna know what I'm thinking about?'_

She raised her eyes to gaze at him with suspicion, but he was acting like he hadn't touched his phone at all.

' _What?'_

He glanced at her, finally allowing the corner of his mouth to raise in a barely-there smirk, before tapping out his reply.

' _I'm thinking that I can't wait to be inside of you tonight.'_

She nearly choked on her own breath, descending into a slight coughing fit just as the waiter returned with their dessert. Jack received a death glare mixed with arousal as he thanked the man and arranged the table.

When he finally caught the look she was giving him, he shrugged nonchalantly.

"What?"

Her mouth dropped open in exasperation until she remembered the surprise she had in store for him.

" _Nothing_ ," she responded, using the most succulently innocent voice she could come up with.

The fondue had bananas, cherries, strawberries, marshmallows, and small cubes of angel food cake. Dipping one of the strawberries in the chocolate, she brought it to her mouth, sticking out her tongue to lick the chocolate off.

It took a second for her to notice that Jack was staring, and when she did, she pretended that she was licking something else, something decidedly not strawberry-ish.

She ran her tongue sensuously down the side of the fruit, before popping the entire thing into her mouth and drawing it out slowly, moaning quietly, but loud enough for him to hear.

A tinkling little laugh escaped her when she saw Jack shift in his seat, and he stuck the tip of his tongue out at her. Between the two of them, they finished off everything, sharing the last strawberry.

Christian re-appeared with their check, signaling the waiter to clear off the table.

"Was everything to your liking?"

"Perfect as usual, Christian."

Jack pulled his black leather wallet out of his suit jacket and handed over a black credit card.

"Ah, shall I put the bill on this, Mr. Norrington?"

Her eyes widened to the point where it was uncomfortable. She mouthed the name at Jack in shock.

"Yes, please, and include a generous tip."

" _Mr. Norrington_?" she exclaimed, saying it out loud this time.

"What? I had to find some way to honor our friends of the past."

"James Norrington wasn't exactly your  _friend_."

"Yeah, well, he pays for my stuff now, so I suppose a friend in death then."

She shook her head and rolled her eyes at him.

* * *

They arrived back at his house at 11, and her nerves were jumping the moment they pulled into the driveway. While Jack was distracted with something in the garage, she swiped his phone off of the center console of the Saleen and sent a quick message to Chris.

' _Can you keep Jack distracted for like twenty minutes?'_

' _As in not going in the bedroom?'_

' _Yes please.'_

' _Haha, sure thing.'_

' _Thanks.'_

' _No problem. By the way, his room has track lighting around the ceiling. Changes colors. There are also speakers put in all the way around the room, so if you want to play a song, just fire up the stereo.'_

' _Haha, thanks for the tip.'_

' _Jack is one lucky guy.'_

' _I'm a lucky woman too.'_

She quickly deleted the conversation and placed his phone back where it was right when he opened the door for her to get out.

Just as they got upstairs, Chris appeared from the kitchen.

"Jack, come back downstairs for a second, I found something cool that we can do to the truck."

Holding her breath, she hoped that he would fall for it.

"The truck? K. I'll meet you in the bedroom in a few, darling."

She smiled at the two of them, mouthing a 'thank you' to Chris, who inclined his head at her. The second they disappeared, she slipped into his room and went straight to the closet to pull out the lingerie.

Stripping her dress off, she pulled the lace stockings on delicately, and then put her heels back on. She slipped the black silk panties onto her hips, and then pulled the top on. It had a leather corset built into it, with lace detailing for the rest. She freshly ruffled her hair, and then sat on the bed for a second thinking about which song to use, and which color to light the bedroom with.

Then it hit her, and she felt silly for not thinking of the song before. Stepping over to Jack's shelf of CD's, she scanned down the rows until she found what she was looking for.

 _The Downward Spiral_ by Nine Inch Nails.

Specifically,  _Closer._

She slid the CD into the stereo, but kept it on pause, and thankfully found a remote. Then she decided on the color red in the next moment and configured the lights after working out how. They also had a remote, which made her set up perfect. She also closed the blinds on the windows so that there would be as much of a surprise as possible.

The final touch was lighting some incense that he kept on top of his dresser.

Now she just had to wait.

* * *

The door clicked open, and Jack walked into a pitch black bedroom. Her heartbeat raced as she watched him stare around the room, waiting for his eyes to adjust.

"...Lizzie?"

Something happened inside of her, something raw and beautiful, and all of her nerves left her in a single instant, replaced by an almost predatory feeling. Stretching out her body where she was leaning against the bed, making sure every curve was accentuated for him, she switched the song on.

The beat vibrated through her, making her skin tingle, turning the atmosphere around her into pure electricity. She watched his eyes narrow, his eyebrow raised ever so slightly.

"Lizzie, what's going o-"

His words strangled themselves in his throat, turning into as much of a gasp as she had ever heard from him as the red light washed over everything in the room. His eyes literally fucked her as they drank her in.

Crossing the room to where he was standing, swaying her hips, she reached him just as Trent starting to sing, mouthing the lyrics.

' _You let me violate you.'_

She slid his suit jacket off, kissing the slice of chest peeking through his shirt, letting her lips linger as she raked her nails down the navy blue fabric, stopping at the waistband of his trousers to tug the shirt out.

' _You let me desecrate you.'_

The expression on his face, a look of pure lust, was one that she usually had to work a little bit to bring to the surface, because with it came a rough side of him that he generally kept reserved with her, but tonight, she  _wanted_ him to be rough with her. And she wanted him to reach that point only when his self-control snapped involuntarily.

' _You let me penetrate you_. _'_

He tried to reach for her, tried to slide his hands onto her waist, but she pushed them back, pressing more kisses against his chest as she unbuttoned his shirt, one at a time, pushing it off of his shoulders, letting it fall to the floor forgotten. He opened his mouth but quieted immediately when she held a finger against it.

Circling around him, she attacked his neck, running her tongue along it, nipping at him, latching on, marking his skin.

' _You let me complicate you.'_

Running her hands along the bare skin of his waist, she made quick work of his belt buckle, brushing against the already impressive bulge beneath, earning her a sharp intake of breath. The trousers fell, pooling around his feet. Coming back around, she grabbed his hand and led him to the bed, pushing him back onto it, following to straddle him, slipping her heels and panties off as she went. She let the rest of the song play without lip-singing to it, opting instead to give attention to his gorgeous body.

' _Help me, I broke apart my insides, Help me, I've got no soul to sell.'_

The red lighting made him look sinister,  _sexy_ , and reminded her that a darkness lived inside of him, buried until coerced to come out with just the right temptation.

Her hair tickled his chest as she kissed her way down it, stopping to latch onto one of his nipples, rotating her tongue around the pebbly skin. When his hands came up to tangle in her golden waves, she let him for a second, before pushing them back onto the mattress, giving them an extra bit of pressure so that he knew to keep them there.

' _Help me, The only thing that works for me, Help me get away from myself.'_

Letting her mouth wander down his stomach, letting her fingers play across his ribs, she finally reached the waistband of his boxers, and dipped her fingers into them, looking up at him through her lashes.

His jaw clenched in frustration when she sat up, reaching her hands behind her back to drop the zipper of her top torturously slow, his eyes following the skin that she exposed, until the clothing fell away, her torso bare to his hungry gaze.

' _I want to fuck you like an animal, I want to feel you from the inside, I want to fuck you like an animal.'_

She moved down his body, pulling his boxers off his hips, her mouth watering when his shaft sprang free. Lowering her head, she wound her tongue around him in lazy circles, not wanting to give into what he wanted, wanting him to short-circuit himself with need.

A delicious growl left his mouth as he raised his hips, silently pleading with her, but she pushed him back down, shaking her head demurely at him. Continuing to tease him, refusing to take him in her mouth, she let her nails rake down his thighs, reveling in the shudder it earned her.

' _My whole existence is flawed, You get me closer to god, You can have my isolation.'_

Finally, when she saw just the right amount of intensity in his eyes, she moved back up his body, positioning him at her entrance, and fell, slowly, making sure she felt every inch as he filled her. His head went back, his mouth dropping open in a silent moan, his hands fisting around the sheets.

' _You can have the hate that it brings, You can have my absence of faith, You can have my everything.'_

She rose and fell, drawing her movements out, ignoring any coaxing he did to increase her pace. The music started to pick up tempo, and she purposefully slowed down even more.

Finally,  _finally,_ she heard what she had been waiting for.

"... _christ, Lizzie…"_

His voice was strained and husky, and so absolutely arousing that she almost forgot her entire plan.

' _Help me, Tear down my reason, Help me, It's your sex I can smell, Help me, You make me perfect, Help me become somebody else.'_

She flattened herself against him so that she was close enough to kiss him, but didn't actually touch her lips to his. Instead, she let her final swing, her final weapon, tumble out of her mouth in a seductive whisper.

" _Fuck me._ "

Something in him broke, she could see it in the darkness of his eyes. There was a fire there, a sleeping dragon that she had tickled, and when he rolled them over, dragging her legs around his waist, giving her that first sharp, desperate thrust, she cried out in beautiful victorious glory.

' _I want to fuck you like an animal, I want to feel you from the inside, I want to fuck you like an animal, My whole existence is flawed, You get me closer to god.'_

He was beyond being romantic, beyond being sweet, and she reveled in it as he slammed his hips into her, but she could still tell, in the smallest of ways, that there was still no way that he would hurt her. She clung to him, digging her nails into the skin of his back, tightened her legs around him as he latched onto her neck, the deep growl washing over her skin as it came up from his throat. Whimpers spilled from her as he took her body with hard urgent thrusts, his hands curling around her hips as he raised his head to claim her mouth in a heart stopping kiss.

' _Through every forest above the trees, Within my stomach scraped off my knees, I drink the honey inside your hive, You are the reason I stay alive.'_

A pleasure so intense it almost hurt started to spread through her, starting inside of her, swimming through her veins, invading her skin, making her feel like she might combust. Her body started to buck against him, overwhelmed, torn apart by the oblivion that she was about to tumble into.

She wasn't even sure what was real anymore, besides the man above her, and when he whispered a strained and broken version of her name into her neck, burying his face there a second later, she  _soared,_ her body lifting, seeking, entering some kind of realm not of this earth, the music playing in the background like some kind of strange dream soundtrack. She dimly felt him spill into her, felt his hips jerking against her, felt his hands tighten around her waist, and then he collapsed against her, breathing heavily, while she languidly floated, in a state of euphoria that she couldn't imagine ever leaving.

Somehow, miraculously, she had the presence of mind to tug her stockings off, but the second her head hit the pillow, strong arms gathered her body over, and she fell asleep immediately cradled against a very tired and very satisfied Jack Sparrow.


	9. Divisions of Power

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 9! Hope everyone enjoys! :)

September 11th, Friday Morning, 10:30 AM

* * *

The lingering smell of Drakkar Noir punctured her dream consciousness until she was roused awake, and found that rather than what she normally woke up to, being snuggled next to  _Jack_ , he had his head cradled in the crook of  _her_  neck, his arm slung over her possessively, the rest of his body pressed against her underneath the blanket.

Unwilling to shift him just yet, she reached for her phone slowly, checking the time.

10:30.

The light was blocked from coming in the windows since she had closed the blinds the night before, and she had evidently been too far gone to turn the red lights off. It gave the room a strange feeling, as though it was stuck on a different plane of existence. She grabbed the remote to switch them off.

 _Closer_  was still playing in her head on and off as she lay there, reflecting. She knew that Jack was going to have something to say about last night, perhaps not right away, but once he gained enough presence of mind.

He had always warned her against making him lose control because he was terrified of hurting her, and the handful of times that she had done it, she had woken to a panicked Jack interrogating her about whether he  _had_ hurt her or not. It usually took a little bit of convincing to make him believe that she always knew what she was getting into and that she  _loved_  bringing him to that state of basic instinct.

Because right now, having him laying against her, completely satiated,  _vulnerable_ , was something that made her feel an indescribable feeling of  _special_ , as though she was the most precious thing in the world to him.

His hair was mussed up, some of it tickling her face. Slowly, delicately, she raised her shoulder a bit, hoping that it would be enough to wake him up.

Not only did it not wake him up, he tightened his arm around her and snuggled his face further into her, as though he was afraid that she was going to get up and leave. She sighed, raising her eyes towards the ceiling.

He made an adorable little whine of protest when she shifted more, his head falling down onto the bed. She giggled when he groaned into the mattress.

"Whattime'sit," he mumbled, still very much half-asleep.

"10:30, also known as time to get up."

"'S not, be quiet."

" _You_ be quiet."

"'M gonna go back t' sleep…"

"Mmm, I could let you do that," she said, leaning down to plant light kisses on his shoulder, "but I could  _also_ tickle you."

"'S not nice."

She grinned, brushing her fingers over the hollow of his hip, where she knew he was the most sensitive, and lightly twitched them. He reached down and tried to swat her hand away, jerking his head back and forth.

" _Lizzie_ ," he whined, whimpering into the mattress.

"Gotta get up, then I'll stop."

"Don't wanna get up. M' comfortable."

"Oh yeah?"

He slammed a fist down when she attacked the other hip, digging her fingers in aggressively.

"S-stop, Lizzie, that bloody  _tickles_."

"Are you going to get up?"

" _No_."

"Well then-"

He cut her off when he tugged on her arm, pulling her down next to him. Shifting onto his side, he gathered her closer and kissed the living daylights out of her.

"Mmm, morning darling," he purred when he broke away.

He brushed his hand down her side, settling on her hip, and she waited for the pin to drop.

" _I have something cool for the truck_...think you're sneaky, hm?"

"Hey, it worked, didn't it?

"Uh huh."

"What, you didn't like my outfit?"

"Liked it a little too much, I think. You enjoy playing with fire, don't you?"

"Sometimes," she said, smiling at him. A second later, his face grew serious, and he cast his eyes downward. There it was.

"I didn't hurt you, did I?"

She reached out to stroke her thumb across his cheek.

" _No,_ Jack, you didn't. Like I have told you before, I-"

"-always know what you are getting into. I know."

"Then don't worry about it. I  _like_ it when you're a little rough."

"Well, stripping me to  _that_ song, then throwing me on a bed and teasing me mercilessly  _will_ certainly do that. When did you pick up that outfit anyway?"

"When I was out shopping with Chris the first day I was here. There was this little lingerie shop that I found, and I just had this strange urge to go in."

" _Strange urge_? Right."

"Chris is the one that told me about the special lighting in here, and the speakers you have."

"Well, remind me to give him a medal or something."

"The look on your face when you saw me was priceless. I wish I would've had a camera."

"It's not my fault that you looked like a seductress straight from the land of ' _drive Jack Sparrow out of his mind_ '."

She grinned at him as he threw the covers back and stretched, before getting out of bed and throwing on a pair of boxers, a pair of black jeans, and a plain gray t-shirt.

"Time to work some shit out about this evidence thing, then?" she asked as she scrolled through her phone to her and Ringa's message window.

"Yeah, Chris and Shawn both figured some stuff out. Meet us out on the back porch when you get dressed."

"Okay."

' _About to make progress on the job. Keep your phone next to you in case I want to put you on a speaker call.'_

' _Put me on a speaker call anyways. I want to meet Jack in some kind of way before the end of time.'_

' _Fine. Talk to you in a little bit.'_

She chose a pair of cut-off white capris and a black shirt that had 'FUCK OFF' written on it in big white letters, purchased purely for the novelty, and because  _fuck off_  occupied much of her inner monologue most of the time.

* * *

She walked onto the back patio with the bottle of Carter's root beer that she had found in the fridge, finally getting her first view of the pool. The tile was an iridescent black, and it had black marble sides.

It was  _gorgeous_ , much like the rest of his house.

"About time you join us. Want a slice of pizza?"

She eyed Shawn and the pizza that he was holding out.

"No one fucking eats cold pizza besides you," Jack commented, taking a drag of the cigarette that he had in his hand.

"Yeah, and no one but you eats Taco Bell like it's about to be against the law."

"Fuck you, I'll eat my chipotle grillers 8 days a week as long as it pisses you off.  _And_ you fucking put pineapple on your pizza too. Gross."

"How about you both get each other drunk one night and force feed the other Taco Bell and pineapple pizza respectively. Maybe you will kill each other in a disgusted rage so I can have the house to myself," Chris chimed in, leaning back in his chair with a smirk on his face.

"I am actually fairly certain the house would go to me. Sorry Chris," she said, sitting down in the only empty chair, placing her phone on the table.

" _See_ , at least someone knows what's up," Jack said to the other two, stubbing the cigarette out in the ashtray.

"She certainly knew what was up last night," Shawn muttered, then his head shot up with an 'oh-fuck-I'm-suicidal' look on his face.

A quiet ' _wow'_ came from Chris, and Jack looked around at Shawn like he had half a mind to drown him in the pool, pizza included.

 _These_  were the men that she was stuck with for an undetermined amount of time.

 _Lovely_.

"You're just jealous that you can't find a woman to put up with you for more than five minutes."

"I'm surprised  _she_ puts up with you for more than  _two_."

"Guys, or should I say  _boys_ , could we get this show on the road? For all we know, the Yakuza have already murdered the entire Japanese government by now. Chris, what did you find out?"

"Scotland Yard, or the  _New Scotland Yard_ , as they have taken to calling themselves, is located on the shore of the River Thames. Next to it is the Department of Health, and it's surrounded by four roads. Traffic in the area is fairly heavy due to its proximity to Buckingham Palace."

"I am still a bit confused on why the  _fuck_ a box of evidence that is being used to frame a  _cartel_  by the fucking  _Yakuza_  is being housed in Scotland Yard. Sounds like someone fucked up in geography class," Jack said, scrolling through his phone.

She snorted at him when he tapped once on the screen, the phone starting to ring on speaker.

After a few seconds, an irritated female voice answered on the other end.

" _Hello?_ "

"Suzuki, how is our favorite assassin?"

"...Jack."

"Oh, by  _our_ , I mean my girl, Chris, and Shawn. Say hi to everyone."

"Your...girl? You mean that little tart from the club in India?"

All three of them could tell that Jack briefly contemplated canceling the entire evidence plan to track her down and strangle her. The screen of his Xperia should have at least started on fire with the way he was glaring at it.

"... _Yes,_ Suzuki."

"Whatever, what the fuck do you want?"

"First of all, how is Handa's health?"

"His heart's beating."

"Not quite what I wanted to hear."

"I'll get to it. Why did you call me?"

"I want you to explain to me  _why_ this box is in Scotland Yard."

"Good timing, since I just found out myself. Normally it's either at the Tokyo PD or the Federal District Police in Mexico City, but apparently, the Yakuza has a couple of... _friends_  at Scotland Yard that were willing to keep the evidence out of the way to avoid tampering."

"Crooked cops. What a  _shock_."

"Such is the way of the world. Everyone is crooked."

"Right."

He hung up on her, sliding the phone away from him in annoyance.

"So escape by car from the building is a no-go then…," he said to no one in particular.

"Actually, doing anything in or around the building is probably a no-go," Shawn cut in. "The place itself is always crawling with people, and there are cameras everywhere. The evidence room is all the way in the back, have to go through the entire place to get to it. Too risky."

"That's what I was afraid of. And I don't suppose the British government would take too kindly to mowing a bunch of police officers down with an AK…"

"No, probably not," Shawn said. "The best bet would probably be getting them to extract the evidence to a different location. Then we could intercept it mid-transport."

"Jack, are you sure that Suzuki can handle killing Handa?" Chris asked.

"She'd better. That's a thorn that I  _do not_  need in my side. And how in the fuck are we going to get them to do that?"

"I think I can help with that," she said, taking a sip of her root beer.

She dialed Ringa's number. Her sassy-sounding voice answered.

"Liz,  _hola._ How can I be of service to you and the fine gentlemen?"

"Ringa, nice to meet you. We actually-"

" _Follame_ , his voice  _is_  nice, Liz. Like velvet-"

"Ringa!"

Jack was staring at her phone, his mouth still frozen around the last syllable, a curious expression on his face.

"...And what else has Lizzie been saying about me?" he asked leaning forward, sending her a devilish look.

And of course, Ringa answered without hesitation, an equally devilish tone in her voice.

"Oh, she talked about how nice your hair is, muy sedoso, how much of a sweetheart you are, and how cute you are when you wake up in the morning."

She sank further down in her chair with every single thing that Ringa said, trying to cover her face with her hands.

"Mmm, it's times like these that make me glad I know more than one language."

"Fuck me," she muttered between her fingers. Ringa was chuckling away, and Shawn and Chris were doing all they could do to stifle their laughter.

"Solo bromeo, Liz. So, what task did you have in mind?"

"We need to find a way to get the evidence transported out of Scotland Yard."

"Ooh, a bit of subterfuge, I'm in. What are you thinking? Impersonation?"

"More like...emergency crisis," she said, glancing at Jack, who nodded in agreement. "Good thing you packed a bag. Think you can be here by tomorrow night?"

"Sure, the flight from New York to London only takes about seven hours. I can leave in the morning."

"Perfect, see you then."

"Si, then I can tease you about your lovely man in person."

She hung up before Ringa could say any more.

" _So_ , from the way I see it, the only way they will even consider moving that box is if they are forced to. Ringa is quite good at causing a panic. She has helped me get out of sticky situations plenty of times by making the surrounding area enough of a clusterfuck for me to escape undetected."

"Well, there are certainly plenty of things that would panic them enough. Bomb threat, terrorist threat, anything that would potentially fuck the building up," Chris said.

"Ringa can pretend to be pretty much anyone we need her to be. Police dispatch, medical dispatch, the government, etc. That will leave Jack and I open to intercept without being previously involved."

"And what are Chris and I going to do? Sit here and twiddle our thumbs?"

"You're going to find a way to get into the city's traffic cameras, Chris. I need eyes everywhere when I am flying down the highway doing 105. And Shawn, you are going to make the McLaren drivable here, and make damn sure that every single fucking thing in that car is in pristine condition."

"Okay, but-"

" _And_ you are going to do the same thing to the Viper. That's what she's gonna drive."

" _Fine_."

"Could the two of you maybe clear out for a little while? I think her and I deserve a day alone in the house before all of this shit gets started."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever, enjoy yourselves," Chris said, shaking his head.

* * *

Both she and Jack got up at the same time, her intention being to find something to eat. Her plans were cut short when he caught her and spun her around, enclosing her in his arms.

"So, you called me a  _sweetheart_ , hm?"

"Maybe-"

"And you think my hair is silky?"

"Well, it is-"

"And I'm  _cute_  when I wake up?"

"You certainly were this morning."

"There is a difference between being cute and being so tired from the night before that I could sleep for a week."

"I didn't know that it was possible for the great Jack Sparrow to  _get_ tired out."

He tilted his head down and gave her a little chuckle, before pulling her closer.

"Congratulations, then. You have achieved the unachievable."

She snuck her hands under his shirt, enjoying the warm feeling of his skin.

When they had drunk from the Fountain, all of their scars, every mark that they had gained from battle, or from other misfortunes, had vanished, leaving their skin smooth, unblemished. The two bullet wounds on the left side of Jack's chest were gone, his "P" was gone, though she could still perfectly picture it if she were to look at his wrist, the spidery scar that went down his right arm was gone, and the scars that he had revealed to her during their first time making love, the whip marks on his back, were gone.

When she had asked him whether anything had changed because of it, he had told her that he hadn't been ashamed of any of them before, more indifferent than anything, but he did feel like a piece of his history was being taken away, the evidence of everything that he had done. Now it was truly only his word that people had to believe.

It had reminded her of their first time alone together, being marooned on that island. She had questioned him about whether or not all of the stories about him were true, after hearing that he had not, in fact, spent a very long time on the island, and he had shown her his bullet wounds, his pirate brand, and the scar on his arm.

That gesture, that one simple reveal, had laid some of the foundation that had shaped her worldview from there forward. The stories, the myths that are told about a person, tall tales, and exaggerations, could often be so to hide the true horror of what really happened. She had often wondered if Jack himself had purposefully made the stories about him seem fantastical to accomplish exactly that.

She had informed him that she was sure they would amalgamate a whole new plethora of scars eventually. And they had. He had a scar from a gash made by a knife running across the bottom of his rib cage on the right side, though it was so thin that one really had to look hard to see it. He had a new bullet wound on his thigh, but that one had also faded quite a bit since she had seen it last. On his left bicep, he had a scar from a piece of car window getting embedded in his arm in '72. It had been a rather violent car accident, and he had been lucky to walk away with the small injuries he did have.

A small thin line wrapped around her ankle when she had been caught with a switchblade, and she had a very thin line on her neck from a knife.

"So, what's the plan for today, since we have the house to ourselves?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe a dip in the pool?

Glancing around him at the object in question, a mischievous smile spread across her face.

"A 'dip in the pool' sounds too innocent for us."

"Oh, come on now love, I just said I was  _tired_."

"You and I both know damn well that the only way you would actually turn down having sex with me is if you are dead or dying, and I am still mildly unconvinced about that last one."

He nuzzled her face with his, snickering.

"Careful, I might just throw you in."

"I'll take you down with me, mark my words,  _Captain Sparrow_."

That earned her a straight up laugh.

"I have no doubt about that, my fierce  _Pirate King_."

* * *

She wasn't a woman that normally cared for emotional mundane things that normal people spent days in and days out trying to strive,  _reach_ for, but now that something of hers, something that she considered dear to her, had been  _taken_ , there was nothing more vital than regaining that bit of normality in her life.

As an assassin, it was important for her to stick to one talent, rather than branching out, and that was the only reason that she had hired Jack Sparrow to retrieve the evidence. Dabble in too many things, and you get spread too thin. The focus, the drive, becomes muddled, like a soup with too many ingredients.

That, and she knew that he was more than capable of doing the job. Stories about him had been whispered around her, sometimes by people she intended on killing, and sometimes by her employers. Her own experience with him had her vaguely worried for her health several times, but he wasn't a person to go out looking for someone to kill. It was only when some poor person had the unfortunate idea to fuck with whatever it was that he wanted that he resorted to violence.

There had also been stories that were vaguely similar about a woman, one without mercy or compassion to those that did not deserve it, and once that stopped at nothing to gain what she wanted, and she had a sneaking suspicion that the woman she had called a  _tart_ on the phone might be one and the same.

The white suit she wore was fitted, making her posture perfectly straight, and the high ponytail of sleek black hair swayed behind her as she walked.

A stark contrast to the dark and dingy house she had just entered. It smelled of old tobacco and stale alcohol, the lingering stain of smoke giving everything a look as though it was decaying into a pit of death.

The Sinaloa Cartel, also known as the Blood Alliance, was an organized drug trafficking syndicate, broken up into different divisions that were spread throughout Mexico. They were known for their brutal gang violence, and for their production of marijuana and Mexican opium.

It was a long story about how she had gotten involved with them, but for a short summary, she had met a poor family while on a job here, only to learn that the father was a member of the Cartel, and had been trying to leave for quite some time. She hadn't spoken to them for awhile, not until a few weeks ago, anyway.

Dull voices could be heard in the kitchen, rough and scratchy from years of cigarettes and bodily neglect.

Being careful to avoid touching anything with fear of contracting some kind of disease, she approached, finding a group of three men seated around a piece of shit fold-up kitchen table, flinging around playing cards in an intense game of poker, one where the jackpot was almost certainly which one of them got to perform the next cartel assassination.

The one in the back looked up at her with a gaze that she would almost describe as greasy. Sweat was collecting on his forehead, and his complexion looked like a person that had their aging suddenly accelerated by 20 years while still being only 35.

"Ahh,  _entra, entra_ , únete a nosotros,  _join us_!"

"...No thank you, I am here on...business, Arturo."

"Business, business, always business. What informacion do you have for me?"

She curled her lip up at the man, the  _snake_ , as he should really be called.

"It's about the job you gave me. The evidence."

"Ahhh, yes of course, how muy tonto of me. Well?"

"I hired outside help."

The other men at the table grew silent, their hands freezing with their cards still in them, like strange mannequins.

"...outside help. Are you not fit for the job?"

"Arturo, I'm a hit woman. My job is to kill targets, not steal things."

"I gave you the job to steal the evidence. And now you are telling me that you cannot do the job."

"Clearly she doesn't want the property back after all-"

" _Shut the fuck up Fernando_."

The man that had interjected snapped his mouth shut, shuffling his cards with shaking hands like the pussy follower that he was.

" _Who_ did you hire?"

That piece of information was one that could make this meeting in a dingy cartel hell hole go several different ways. One, they could cut all ties with her out of fear, two, they could completely side step her to work directly with Jack, or three, they could try to kill Jack to keep the operation contained, but she would advise against trying that. She hadn't decided against Handa's bounty only because of the fact that she needed Jack. She was also uncertain about her ability to actually take him down. Most of her targets had been wealthy businessmen living a secret criminal double life, or outed criminals that just needed to die.

But Jack, he was neither of those things. He was far above a simple criminal, or a simple man in general.

"Jack Sparrow."

Arturo leaned back, his protruding belly flattening out to look like a giant flesh pancake, and grabbed the cigar that was sitting on the table to take a long puff.

"Well, I certainly cannot comment negatively on your standards of hire. Sparrow is a talented man. Muy profesional," he drawled, smoke curling out from his mouth and nose.

"He is a thief, is he not?" said the only man that had stayed silent until then. A handsome younger man, with slicked back black hair. He looked almost like a Mexican James Dean.

"More than a thief, Rafael. A corredor callejero, a  _street racer_ , he knows his way around firearms like a taxi driver knows his way around New York City, and I believe the Russians know him as an  _asesino en serie_ , a serial killer, but I have never heard the full story behind that one."

"Are you fucking telling me that you are okay with this?" the man called Fernando spat.

"That evidence is more important than both of your lives, and if you question me again, this will be the last fucking poker game you will ever play."

He wisely chose to be quiet again.

"Do you have...any other information?"

"The box is in Scotland Yard, in the UK. The Yakuza have a few shifty cops who have agreed to house it there."

"And I am assuming that Sparrow knows all this information as well?"

"He knows as much as he needs to."

"Good, good. Your property is in buenas manos until you clear this case up for us."

She inclined her head very slightly and turned to leave.

"Oh, and Suzuki, if you or Sparrow make things...complicated, we will not hesitate to terminate."

"Arturo, I would buy tickets to watch you try and  _terminate_  Jack Sparrow."

He gave her a mini salute as she left, laughing smugly to himself.

* * *

She circled her finger around in the water, making a wake behind it as she went.

"This is a beautiful pool."

Jack was sitting on a raised portion, leaning against the edge, wearing a black pair of swim trunks. He had a small glass of Captain Morgan in his hand. She was wearing a pair of black underwear and a sports bra, since she had forgotten to buy a swimsuit, standing right across from him. This section of the pool was only about four feet deep, coming up to her chest.

The weather was typical for Britain, slightly on the colder side, but his pool was also heated, so that didn't really matter.

"I would say not quite as beautiful as you, but that would make me sound like a sap."

"Aww, I like it when you sound like a sap."

He took a sip of rum, then decided to just down the entire glass.

"Wow, maybe I wanted some."

"I mean, there is an entire...well, several entire bottles back inside."

He set the glass on the cement and joined her, the water rippling around him as he walked towards her, pushing her to the other side of the pool.

"I'm surprised you don't have an entire room in your house just to store rum in. Kegs even."

"Who says I don't?"

"I would've found it by now, probably."

Suddenly her phone buzzed, and she waded over to the towel that she had wrapped it in by the stairs.

' _Hola Liz. My flight leaves at 9 AM tomorrow morning. Should be there by around 9 PM counting driving.'_

' _Sounds good. Are you going to rent a car?'_

' _Si.'_

' _Text me when you take off and when you land.'_

' _Not a problem. Talk tomorrow.'_

Just as she put her phone back on the towel,  _someone_  attacked her from under the water, pulling her under, tickling her rib cage like a man possessed. She tried to shout his name, but it just came out as a bunch of garbled noises, complete with an explosion of bubbles. She tried to pry his hands off her, but he was too strong, and only doubled his efforts.

When she surfaced, after she was done coughing up pool water, she rounded on him, only to find him grinning like a fool at her.

* * *

"You know, I really enjoy almost being drowned," she muttered as she walked out of the bathroom.

"Yeah, I could tell by the way you shouted at me. It was quite entertaining," he murmured, half-asleep already.

"I'm sure."

She toweled off and then crossed the room to the bed, sliding under the comforter, appreciating the feel of the black satin sheets as she drifted to sleep.


	10. Two Kings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 10! :) Hope you all enjoy this one!

September 11th, Friday Night, 8:30 PM

* * *

She was stretched out on Jack's black leather sofa in the living room, trying not to fall asleep. The damn thing, along with the feather pillow that he kept there, was comfortable, and  _very nice_ , just like the rest of Jack's house. At the end of this annoying job, moving in didn't seem that terrible of a prospect.

Twisting around to look at the clock on the oven across the room, she discovered that she had been lying there for two hours.

It was 8:30 P.M.

Suddenly her phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Hey Liz, I just landed. I should be at Jack's place in a few hours. 10:30 or 11 maybe?"

"Ok, I will text you the address. You can park your rental car down in the garage. Jack has a spot set aside."

"Ok. I can't wait to meet him."

"Be careful. He's mine," she said in a sing-song voice.

"Oh, amiga, I keep telling you that I wouldn't dream of trying to steal him from you. See you soon."

"Ok, bye."

She tapped the end button on the call just as Jack came up from downstairs, his hair a bit mussed up, more curly than usual. He was wearing a pair of gray jeans and a red Assassin's Creed t-shirt.

"She just land?"

"Yeah, she'll be here in a few hours."

"Did you tell her that she can park in the garage?"

"No, I told her to park in the forest and to mind the mosquitoes."

He laughed as he poured himself a glass of merlot.

"Is she getting a rental car?"

" _No_ , she is walking all the way from the airport. By a couple of hours, I actually meant she'll be here tomorrow morning."

" _God_ , I love your sarcasm."

She scowled when she realized that he was asking obvious questions on purpose.

"And you're annoying. Pour me a glass."

"What am I, your slave?"

She twisted around again to look at him, making a whipping motion with her hand, accompanying it with a little sound effect.

"Maybe. Do I have to say please?"

"Get on your knees and beg, more like."

"Jack, if I have to get on my knees, it's for one specific purpose, and it's  _not_ begging."

The couch sagged when she sat up and rotated so that she was facing the kitchen. She found him staring at her over the top of his wine glass as he took a sip, and gave him an overly-bright smile when he raked a hand through his hair. "There will certainly be  _someone_ begging, but it wouldn't be  _me_ ," she added under her breath.

" _Fine,_ I'll pour you a glass, your  _majesty_ ," he muttered after he swallowed, pushing his lips out in faux annoyance. "And I don't  _beg_."

"Uh huh."

She had plenty of memories from being the Pirate King, ranging from commanding her own fleet of ships, holding meetings in the council room, breaking up arguments in the council room, entertaining youngsters that always frolicked to and fro throughout the city, holding celebrations of all kinds, and of course, placing a fear of pirates into the hearts of all who opposed them.

But the one thing that had felt off to her almost right away after Will left was being in command of Jack. It certainly wasn't that he had been difficult to command, or beneath her to command, but she had rather felt he was more her equal than her subordinate, especially after their relationship graduated past steamy glances across the table, and dinner conversations that steered towards topics that  _friends_ wouldn't dare bring up.

After one particularly entertaining night that involved losing a card game against Captain Teague, she had brought the matter up to Jack in her cabin.

* * *

" _Has there ever been a situation where there was a suggestion of two Pirate Kings?"_

_He looked up from where he was perched on her bed examining his rings, his hair trinkets clinking together._

" _Two? Do you really think that with it being hard enough to elect one that they would ever have two?"_

_She started to strip off her uniform, a handsome black leather vest set, with black breeches and a black coat, down to just the breeches and white shirt she wore, a small gold necklace dangling just above her breasts._

" _No, I suppose not."_

" _Why do you ask?"_

_Sighing, she walked over to the bed and sat down next to him, fidgeting with her shirt._

" _I don't like commanding you. It doesn't...feel right."_

" _...Oh."_

_He sounded confused, as though he didn't know how to respond._

" _It's just that with us being...whatever this is, it doesn't feel appropriate to be in charge of you."_

" _Lizzie, I voted for you knowing full well that I was going to be under your command-"_

" _Yes, I realize that, but I would prefer-"_

_She stopped, taking his hand in hers, playing with his fingers, and prepared for the argument that she was sure was going to bloom. They always had trouble talking about sensitive matters._

" _I would prefer it if you would rule with me."_

" _What, like a joint thing?" he asked before the gravity of her request sunk in._

" _Something like that, yes."_

" _So, we would both be kings then?"_

" _It would make the most sense. We would have equal authority over the Brethren, and the only decision that absolutely needs both of our approval would be a declaration of war."_

" _Lizzie...are you sure about this?"_

_She detected some hesitancy in his tone, as though he suspected that there was some kind of ulterior motive, or trickery wrapped up in her request. She also detected that he had skillfully maneuvered his head closer and closer to hers._

" _Yes, I'm sure. You sound...like you don't agree."_

" _I just...I hope you don't feel pressured into doing this, that's all."_

" _Pressured? By what?"_

" _I didn't intend on intruding on your authority when-"_

" _Jack, I was the one that dragged you up here, not the other way around. Did you not hear a single word I said? I want you next to me, and I would still want it whether we had a physical relationship or not."_

_He brought her hand to his mouth, kissing her fingers._

" _You realize that this is going to confirm that we are...involved, right?" he asked between kisses._

" _Confirm it to who? Who do you think doesn't already know? Certainly, no one that resides here."_

" _I suppose it is hard to miss when you order me to your cabin at strange hours. And you aren't exactly quiet sometimes."_

" _Well, that's your fault."_

_He was close enough to kiss her now, close enough for her to count his dark eyelashes, which were far too long to be on a man, but then again, everything about him was a beauty not seen on most men._

" _Mmm…"_

_And then he did take her mouth, her chest constricting with the immediate moan that she gave him as his tongue found its way inside, his clever hands winding around her back to push her into him._

_She had wondered since their first...encounter, more than three weeks ago, if that initial pleasure, that satisfaction at finally having him would fade with each subsequent time, but after having collected enough evidence, in that each damn time he nearly made her heart vacate her body with the pleasure that gripped it regardless of what it was that he was doing, she had decided that no, not only was it not going to fade, it was going to expand, bloom, like a wildfire out of control._

_And he bloody knew it, the scoundrel, taking every opportunity to demonstrate how wild he could make her._

_Just as he was doing now as he maneuvered her back onto the bed, lifting her shirt off of her at the same time, and in the next breath, swooping down to take a hardened nipple into his warm mouth. Her head went back, a long sigh emitting from her, and a grin from him as she tangled her fingers into his hair._

_His hand came up to play with the breast that he had just abandoned as he switched to the other, and it only made the ache between her legs almost uncomfortable._

" _So...oh...so you accept the...proposition?" It was difficult to remember what words sounded like._

_Nimble fingers disappeared between them to undo the laces of her breeches, and she wiggled her hips to help him pull them down._

" _I certainly don't see an argument against it," he said as he slid down her body, coming to kneel between her legs, her hips sitting at the edge of the bed._

" _Oh, oh, that's...that's good," and she wasn't even sure what she was referring to anymore because he had attached his mouth to her, letting his tongue play across her slick folds, his hands kneading her thighs. She marveled at how he could bring her body to such a state of arousal so quickly, like a master musician plucking at a harp._

_He liked to tease her, liked to dance his tongue around her clit, before returning back down to dip it inside of her, repeating this frustrating restraint until she was damn near shouting at him to give her what she wanted._

" _...Jack...dammit, please…"_

" _No, you see Lizzie, we have equal authority now, you can't order me around anymore."_

_The tone of his voice held such a satisfied smugness, one that he knew got on her last nerve._

" _Nevermind, nevermind the agreement...I need…oh god yes..."_

_He had just slid two fingers inside of her, painfully slowly, drawing out the friction, and then finally gave in, fastening his mouth to her clit with fervor, swirling his tongue around it, even nibbling with his teeth ever so slightly, making her stomach constrict as he drifted his fingers across it with his other hand, then balancing her legs on his shoulders._

" _...Oh god, that feels so bloody good…"_

_The two fingers inside of her curled up, stroking her there too, and she could feel more moisture coating them, only fueling the pace at which she was turning into something not even human, just a mass of pleasure and energy as her head thrashed back and forth, sweat forming a fine sheen on her skin, her hips bucking against his mouth._

_Her moans turned into ragged whimpers, spilling out of her when he started to thrust his fingers in long strokes, his thumb moving at a furious circular pace, the knot in her loins tightening to an unbelievable intensity._

" _Jack...Jack...almost..."_

_Just as she nearly scaled that impossible peak, just as she felt the spreading heat blooming out from her clit to every nerve ending in her body, he stopped, stone cold stopped, withdrawing his fingers from her, detaching his mouth, letting her legs down, and she caught an evil little smile spreading across his lips._

" _...you damn bastard…" was all she could force past her lips through her wheezing frustrated breaths, her head flopping back against the bed._

" _Mmm, Lizzie, delaying it always makes it better in the end."_

_She heard the rough friction of fabric rubbing together, and almost came anyway when she saw how hard he was for her. Thanking the gods for the 875th time that month that she had such a creature as Jack for a bedfellow, she scooted around so that she had a pillow under her head and sighed as he settled his wiry muscular form across her lithe body, nearly biting her own tongue when his fingers returned to play with her clit, the remnants of her almost-orgasm firing through her._

" _If you don't bloody get inside of me I'll just demote you. You'll be nothing more than a miserable sod scrubbing the floor next to my throne."_

_He chuckled against her lips, nipping the bottom one playfully._

" _Well, we can't have that, can we."_

 _He reached down to place himself at her entrance, her thighs clenching in anticipation. When he started to slide in, so bloody slowly that she thought she might die, her mouth dropped open in a silent moan of ecstasy, her nails creating little half-moons on his shoulders. His voice lowered_ _a couple of octaves when he breathed an 'oh my god' into her neck once he was fully sheathed, betraying the cool facade he put on, letting her know that her body made him just as undone as he did to her._

_In her silent musings on the physical mechanics of sex, she had wondered if the size of a man mattered, or if it was really only the skill of the wielder. In her not so silent musings, she had dared to ask Jack that exact question a week ago, and it had earned her one of a string of genuine laughs that made her toes curl. He loved her curiosity and frequently told her so every time she questioned him on such things._

" _You do a number on a man's self-confidence, love," he had said once he had calmed down. She was quick to reassure him that he was more than adequate, to which he replied in that damn smug tone of his that he knew perfectly well how adequate he was._

" _Certainly the skill, though, I would think. I mean, unless...I don't know...unless it's…"_

_He had stopped, choosing instead to demonstrate a length of about three inches with his fingers, earning him a whooping laugh._

_With him inside of her now, and every time prior to now, she was confident far beyond a reasonable doubt that he was more than three inches, and that his skill was probably matched by no one. He hadn't moved yet, and she wondered whether he was trying to kill himself, because usually even waiting a second was torturous for him. No matter, because just being able to feel him there, feel every ridge of his length, the throbbing, the heat, the closeness, it was almost as good as the friction of it._

" _Jack?" she questioned quietly, trailing her fingers down his back, tracing the scars there. He raised his head to stare down at her, the ends of his hair tickling her shoulders._

" _...I just...we always get started so fast that I never get a chance to really just enjoy your presence like this. Sometimes I wonder if it's even real still."_

_She didn't respond right away, only exhaled slowly, the words 'I love you' on the tip of her tongue, and every other synonym waiting behind them, but she couldn't bring herself to say them, couldn't ruin this thing they had, if that level of commitment wasn't what Jack wanted._

_Instead, she tightened her inner muscles around him, watching as his eyes slipped closed, his mouth going just a bit slack._

" _It's real, Jack."_

_A silent 'thank you' warmed his eyes when he opened them again. She was saddened by the fact that he always needed reassurance that she wasn't going to suddenly change her mind and run back to Will, or decide that he wasn't worth her time after all, but she forgot all about how emotions even worked when he gave her a slow thrust, capturing her lips in a tender caress, welcoming her sigh into his mouth._

_She did love him, had loved him ever since he had dragged her out of the water, even if she hadn't known it yet, just before pointing his pistol at her head while forcing her to arm him with his effects. But even then, she had not felt even a smidgen of fear, and if she were to freely admit it, it was desire that took the place of the fear that a woman should have felt in that situation._

_But admitting that to him, telling him that she loved him, felt like turning the page in a book that they were only a paragraph into. It wasn't time for that next step._

_Would it ever be time?_

" _...oh, Jack...how…"_

_His thrusts were still slow, languid, like he was trying to draw out every bit of pleasure from her that he could. Once in awhile he did this, this maddening slow pace, building up the anticipation, until it was all she could do to not push on his arse with her hands, or thrust against him, or some other method to coax him into moving faster within her._

_But when he did, when he surprised her usually by suddenly burying himself in her with a swift jerk of his hips, it was like a dam being broken for all of the heat that flooded her core, exploding back through the rest of her body, just like it was doing now._

" _How what, love?" he answered with a question, his voice raspy and shaky against the skin of her chest where he was currently leaving little red marks with his mouth. She responded with a shaky laugh of her own, memorizing all of the ridges of his back with her hands as he moved within her, increasing the speed of his thrusts a fraction at a time._

" _...how...oh god...how do you make me feel like this…"_

_It was a wonder that she could speak at all with the growing scorching heat reaching a boiling point inside of her as his movements became almost sharp in their intensity, and she responded gratefully when he offered his mouth to her for some kind of grounding._

" _...fuck, fuck, fuck…" he chanted as he tore it away almost immediately after, letting it rest against her cheek as his hands gripped her legs to raise them higher, changing the angle, hitting that glorious spot inside of her that made stars flash in front of her eyes, then releasing them to wrap his arms around her, her cries getting louder, and she was sure that she had clawed his back ragged by now, not that he had ever minded._

" _...Jack...close...oh...almost…"_

_He reached down, somehow summoning the mental fortitude to rub his thumb across her clit, and it was that one final touch that sent her careening over the edge into the abyss, her nails digging into his back, earning her a deep growl as his thrusts became erratic, matching the rhythm of her pulsating core. The second she had a moment of clarity, she raised her head and latched onto his neck, angling her hips the way she knew he liked, and then released his skin to whisper into his ear, feeling brave._

" _You like how tight I feel don't you?"_

_He responded by pushing his mouth against hers in a bruising kiss, tearing it away again a second later to bury his head in her neck, thrusting into her hard once, twice, before his body went rigid, barely having time to withdraw as he came, a beautiful raw sound coming out of him._

_She loved it when he finished during sex, almost more than her own orgasm. Just knowing that he had reached that peak, that height because of her made her feel warm inside, almost proud._

_He lay atop of her until his heart slowed to a reasonable level, his head nestled between her breasts and then he lifted it to give her a lazy smile, a content look on his face._

" _Getting brave, are we? And to answer your question, I do."_

_HIs voice was gravely from their activities, sending goosebumps across her skin. He chuckled when she tugged him up for a hug before he got up to get a damp washcloth to wipe off the mess he made._

_When he got back in bed, he gathered her into his arms. She had discovered that lying there in his warm embrace just snuggling was almost as satisfying._

" _I accept your proposition then, your majesty," he whispered into her hair, earning him a giggle._

" _You don't need to call me that anymore. Not that you had used the title properly before anyway."_

" _So what_ should _I call you?"_

" _Just Lizzie, like you always have."_

_He looked like he wanted to say something else, then shook his head, rolling into his back._

" _Goodnight, love."_

" _Goodnight."_

* * *

That particular night had certainly become entertaining for far different reasons besides a card game.

It had also been the first of many nights that she had come close to telling him that she loved him, before shying away. Breathing a sigh of relief, she remembered that they had sorted that out. She could tell him that she loved him anytime she wanted, and it was magical.

And the theme of them being equal in everything they did continued. They always did an equal amount of work for any joint job, they got an equal share of the award money, and Jack always made sure to give her half of whatever treat he happened to be snacking on at any given time. The man was a fiend for chocolate.

"What're you thinking about, hm?" he asked as he sat down on the couch opposite her, handing her the wine glass.

"The night where we decided that we would co-rule the Cove."

"Ahh, that was a long time ago, but it was a  _fun_ night, wasn't it?"

A cute little smirk almost twitched the corner of her mouth up, but she somehow managed to keep a straight face.

"Mhm, card games with your father were always fun."

"...Card games?"

"That's what I said."

He leaned back into the couch, glaring playfully at her.

"Careful, I might just take your wine back."

She finally allowed a smirk.

"Come over here and try."

Unfortunately, his phone rang right at that moment. It was Chris.

She opened her phone up and scrolled through her news app, looking for anything interesting to read.

Chinese diplomats arguing, Cheeto-face signing another idiotic law, more about police brutality, something about a 'greener future', there was  _nothing_ good.

That was at least until she happened upon an article that actually caught her attention.

Some props company in the United States was investing 30 million dollars into rebuilding historic ships. The first one was apparently a ship called the  _Virginia_ , originally built in 1607. She scrolled through the rest of the short article, finding nothing else of interest.

Wouldn't it be something if they were to build the  _Pearl_? That wouldn't be realistic of course, since they didn't have any reference to go off of, and she doubted that they would build a pirate ship anyways unless an outside buyer paid for it.

A beat went by, then another beat, before her brain caught up with her thought process.

_An outside buyer._

_If they paid for it._

She...she remembered enough of what it looked like to guide them, and Jack had that almost-replica in his bedroom to fill in any gaps.

_An outside buyer._

_Oh my god._

Looking across the couch at him talking animatedly to Chris, she remembered the anguish that he had experienced when his ship had finally sunk for good. It had been an attack on the Cove by the Royal Navy just a year after they had found the Fountain. They had been caught completely off guard by it, and by the time they had mustered enough defenses to fight them off, the  _Pearl_ was already halfway under.

The completely unguarded look of shock on his face had broken her heart, and that was the first and only time since then that she had ever seen him cry.

He had locked himself in her bedroom for a week straight after that, refusing to come out for anything. He wouldn't even let her in or talk to her. He wouldn't talk to anyone. She had put her foot down when he nearly gave himself alcohol poisoning. Even the following year, he wasn't the same. She rarely saw him smile, and if he did smile, it was only at her when he was too sleep-addled to remember, and he was a lot more short tempered, shouting at everyone that wasn't her if they so much as got in his way while walking around.

 _What if..._ oh god it was a crazy idea, absolutely insane, but oh my god if it was actually a plausible thing that she could do...

Just picturing the reveal to him almost brought tears to her eyes. She quickly googled how much it would cost to re-build a pirate ship, and surprisingly found a clear answer right away.

Twelve million dollars.

Her heart sunk.

 _She didn't have twelve million dollars_.

The idea perished just as quickly as it had come, suddenly making her feel exhausted.

"Ok, see ya."

"What did Chris have to say?" she asked, unable to keep the dejected tone out of her voice.

"He was arranging to pick up the McLaren tomorrow. You sound sad."

"I'm not sad. Just tired."

"You don't sound tired. You sound sad. What's up?"

She glared at him with more aggression than she meant to.

" _Nothing_. Just drop it, ok?"

His hands went up in surrender.

"Ok, ok, well whenever you want to talk about it then, if you do."

* * *

She was still wallowing on the couch when a knock at the door made her jump.

"Come in!" she shouted loud enough for Ringa to hear.

When the door opened, in walked a woman that looked like she had come straight out of the heart of Mexico, despite being in New York last. She was wearing red capris, a button up silk shirt with jungle patterns on it, green aviator shades, what looked like 35 different necklaces, and flip flops.

Her long black hair was curled beautifully, and her complexion was a perfect shade of caramel.

The sadness left her for a moment when she jumped up to give Ringa a hug, nearly being suffocated by the smell of the fruity shampoo that she used.

"Hola, Liz.  _Wow,_  nice  _house_. Muy bueno. But the house is not who I want to meet. Where is that lovely man of yours?"

She was spared from having to go find him when he presented himself, coming into the foyer from the direction of the bedroom.

"Holy shit, I didn't realize that my house had teleported itself to Cancun."

Ringa didn't say anything in response, because she was too busy staring at him once she took her sunglasses off, like that scene in Jurassic Park when they first see the dinosaurs. After a second, Jack started to get confused, sliding his eyes over to her in a silent question.

Finally, Ringa seemed to shake herself a bit.

" _Lo siento,_ sorry, but Jesus Christ Liz, you didn't tell me he looked like a jodido maldito dios del sexo."

She stared at Ringa, before descending into a fit of laughter, doubling at Jack's response. The only picture that she had ever seen of Jack was a rather old one, and it was a photograph of him from behind while he was standing on a pier in Hawaii. She had lost the rest of the pictures she had of him in '87, two years before she met Ringa, after a water damage incident in the apartment she had been renting at the time.

Jack looked down at himself with a worried expression on his face, then back up at Ringa like she was crazy.

"What?  _Me?_  No, no, you must be mistaken. I'm like...300 years old, covered in gross wrinkles, bald, missing all of my fingers except one, I have a fake leg because I am missing one of those too, I constantly drool, and she has to help me go to the bathroom. I don't know what part of that looks or sounds like a sex god to you, but to each their own I guess."

He kept a completely straight face until she made a particularly loud squawk of laughter, and only then did he break his composure, grinning like a fool.

"Sexy, smart,  _and funny_ ," Ringa exclaimed, rolling her eyes. "You are one lucky woman."

After she had finally calmed down, she properly introduced them.

"Jack, Ringa, Ringa, Jack."

Ringa enveloped Jack in one of her trademark hugs.

"Nice to meet you," he said, giving her a genuine smile, one that he only reserved for a very select few people.

"Likewise."

* * *

Once Ringa got everything that she had brought with her unpacked in the spare bedroom downstairs, she took a seat at the kitchen table.

"Do you want something to drink? Water, juice, maybe a little bit of rum?" Jack asked from in the kitchen.

"A glass of rum sounds muy delicioso, gracias," Ringa answered, flashing him a friendly smile.

"So, now that you are here, let me fill you in on what we know. Suzuki, Jack's would be-murderer, or at least attempted-murderer, apparently had something stolen from her by the Sinaloa Cartel-"

"Something, what, she didn't tell you what it was?"

"No, just that it was her  _property_. So, in order to get it back, the Cartel asked her to retrieve a box of evidence from Scotland Yard that is apparently being used to frame them for the murder of a Japanese government official by the Yakuza. We get the box for her, she gets her property back."

"And you want to make them transport it out of the Yard so that you can intercept it? I suppose breaking in there would be next to impossible. Too much risk."

Jack handed her the glass when he sat down.

"I was told that you are a good impersonator."

"Si, I can do everything. Police officer, ambulance driver, police dispatch, the government, a crazy woman calling 911, etc."

"Good, we can use that to increase the chaos around the building. We'll get started on the specifics tomorrow."

* * *

They were laying in bed, listening to the wind blow outside. Ringa had thanked Jack for the rum again before retiring to her room.

"Still going to keep what you were upset about earlier a secret? I told you that-"

"-I don't have to be afraid to tell you anything, I know. But this is something that I really can't tell you. It's nothing that you would leave me for, certainly, like cheating or some other horrific thing, but-"

"You don't have to tell me, you have the right to do that too, I just don't like it if you feel like you are afraid of me."

"Jack, I am literally incapable of being afraid of you. I love you."

He gave her soft smile, dropping the issue again. "Love you too, darling."

After he gave her his customary goodnight kiss, they fell asleep just as it started to rain, the drops hitting the roof of the house, soothing them into blissful oblivion.


	11. Pasado, Present, and Mirai

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 11! Yay :) The title is the following:
> 
> Pasado (Past in Spanish), Present, and Mirai (Future in Japanese).
> 
> Hope you all enjoy! :)

September 12th, Saturday Morning, 11:30 AM

* * *

The city of Tokyo was beautiful to the casual resident, or the wide-eyed tourist, and it may be beautiful to him on purely aesthetic grounds, but looking out of the window of his penthouse in that moment, all he could see was the reality of what the city was.

A giant piece of wool pulled over the rest of the world's eyes.

Unlike the drug cartels and the biker gangs or the big city gangs, the Yakuza didn't  _want_ to be noticed unless it was necessary to the cause. They operated in the shadows, in the backdrop of a city that was  _known_ for its low crime rate and cleanliness.

The perfect shroud, not unlike a how a perfect family is a disguise for a serial killer.

Bright lights, advertisements, cars and taxis streaking down the streets, the flashing lights of various parties, and the whir of street racers off in the distance was the essence of Tokyo at first glance, but he saw a playground, a sandbox for him to draw lines in, bending the city to his will.

He had dealt with kinks, with problems within before, but this problem, this fracture in the thousand foot perfect sheet of glass was different.

Tatsuo Izumi was one of his best men, one that he could rely on to do almost anything, but he was also a man of impulse. An impulse that had resulted in the murder of a prosecutor, Akihito Ishii, in a parking garage. The man had been zeroing in on one of their trafficking operations in Russia, and after a confrontation, Tatsuo had taken it upon himself to end the problem. That would have been fine, rewarded even, had he not left evidence behind pinning him to the crime.

As luck would have it, a few higher members of the Mexican drug cartel, Sinaloa, were vacationing in Japan for a few weeks and were staying in the same hotel that Ishii was killed under. All it took was a little evidence re-location, some fabrication, a little bit of blackmail, and some manipulation. As far as the law was going to be concerned, Martin Ramos had killed Akihito Ishii in his hotel room in a scuffle.

The evidence was now located in Scotland Yard in the U.K. to avoid tampering. He didn't trust the Japanese government with it, and he certainly didn't trust the Mexican government with it. It was surprisingly easy to pose as another prosecutor to convince the Brits to store the box.

Fortunately, the British government had also been looking into the trafficking operation on the Russia side and had recently gotten into contact with Ishii to discuss mutual information a few weeks before he was killed.

They thought that they had breached an unknown tie to the Mexicans within the trafficking circle, and had been quite eager to examine the evidence. It was now sitting in their storeroom, out of the way of any connections that Ishii may have had here, and certainly out of the way of any connections that Ramos may have had in Mexico.

They couldn't afford to have an investigation opened up about Izumi. They couldn't afford to have an investigation opened up about anything within the Yakuza.

Making sure that Izumi didn't get convicted of the murder was of paramount importance. However, should the evidence angle go south, he was confident that they could construct a different plan, but that was an absolute last resort option. The evidence  _was_  plan A, B, C, and D.

"Sasaki-san?"

He turned to side-eye the woman that had just stepped into the room.

"Kon'nichiwa, Seiki, what information do you have?"

"Izumi-san is here to speak with you."

"Ah, send him in then please."

"Certainly, just a moment."

She disappeared through the door she came in, replaced a few seconds later by a tall slim man with a long black straight ponytail and a white suit.

"Izumi-san, to what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I'll get straight to the point. Are you sure this frame job is going to work?"

"Are you questioning me because of a lack of faith in me, or fear for your own reputation?"

Izumi straightened his suit sleeves before he answered, making direct eye contact.

"Never a lack of faith in you, but there are a number of things that can go wrong."

That was certainly true. A  _staggering_ amount of things could go wrong. The evidence could get damaged, they could have left unknown evidence behind in the garage, Ishii could have more information stored away that they hadn't known about, the Mexicans could come up with a defence that they were not prepared for, someone could betray them down the line, and then the worst of the outcomes: something from left-field, a variable that they could not predict and could not control.

"You're right, of course. But would you prefer giving up and being convicted? Due to the circumstances of the murder,  _without_ this frame job, you would be sitting in a prison cell."

"No, I suppose not."

"All we can do is hope for the best at the moment. I will admit, this entire situation is frighteningly similar to a house made of toothpicks. One nudge and everything could come crashing down around us."

The man appreciated the analogy with a twitch of his mouth.

"We just have to make sure the glue is strong enough to hold, then."

"Indeed. Sayōnara, Izumi-san."

* * *

The aroma of coffee filled the air as she stepped into the kitchen. It was 11:30 A.M, Saturday morning.

"Hey, Lizzie. Jack is outside with Shawn. Should be in inna minute," Chris said when he saw her, offering her a mug. She accepted, smiling at him.

"Thank you."

Ringa was already sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal.

"Hola, buenos dias."

She felt a sort of comfort now that Ringa was here, like finding something she had lost.

"Morning. How did you sleep?"

"Like a baby, you? Oh nevermind, I forgot who you sleep with now. Would be difficult to not sleep well when you're next to  _that_."

She rolled her eyes, raising an eyebrow when Chris chimed in.

"Hey, I'm a straight as a pin guy and that damn man has made  _me_ question my sexuality. I think it is safe to say that everyone in this house is jealous of you."

"See, amiga, I'm not the only one gushing."

"Gushing about what?"

They all turned to look at Jack when he walked in.

She rolled her eyes again, waving her finger at Ringa and Chris.

"These two seem to be under the impression that you are a gift from God physically, and they won't shut up about it."

He stopped walking, crossing his arms over his chest, looking mildly offended.

"And you aren't?"

" _No,_ you are 300 years old, covered in wrinkles, and you  _drool_. Remember?"

"Oh, right, sorry, completely forgot how ancient and decrepit I am, which reminds me that I need to find my cane. My knees are getting a bit wobbly."

She almost snorted into her coffee.

Once they were all settled around the table, Shawn produced several posters that appeared to be screenshots of Google Maps satellite images.

"I printed out a few shots. This one," he placed one in the center of the table, "is a shot of the police department and the surrounding area. It's right on the edge of the river to the right, and the Department of Health is to the left. The streets around it are pretty tight and grid like."

"There is a small memorial center with a parking lot just to the west of the station. That is where you and Jack are going to park and wait for the transport."

"They are most likely going to take it to the West Hampstead police station to store it there," Jack added. "It's a bit northwest from the Yard, like six miles."

"Yep, and on the way, there is a collection of industrial buildings that you two need to direct the transport vehicle to for interception."

"Hang on a second," Ringa interjected. "How do we know that they are going to worry about moving the box in the first place? I would think they would prioritize civilian lives over a box…"

"Normally they would, but the Yakuza have a few paid off cops at the Yard to pay  _special_ attention to it," Shawn replied, finishing off his coffee.

"Interestingly enough, I looked into the case a little bit," Chris said, scrolling on his phone.

"Apparently, the Brits are looking into a sex trafficking operation in Russia that has ties to the Yakuza. Since the 'Kuzas have framed the Cartel, the Brits also think that they have a major breakthrough in the case with the evidence."

"Wait a minute, so are you telling me that this has become a three country case in sex trafficking?" she asked at the same time as Jack grumbled an 'oh fuck the  _Russians_  are involved?'.

"Yeah, seems that way. As far as I can tell, the Yakuza killed a prosecutor who was closing in on the Yakuza end of the trafficking operation. The cartel members were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now that they are being framed for the murder, the Brits think they are part of the trafficking ring."

They sat and processed all of the information for a second.

"...So the not-crooked cops are probably going to want that evidence moved too, since it is such a high profile case, and they will find a couple of  _eager_ cops to transport it, who in reality are transporting it on Yakuza orders?" Jack asked, tapping the table rhythmically.

"That sounds about right," Chris answered.

"Armored truck?" Shawn asked, the tone of terrible realization in his voice.

"Most likely."

"And they are going to wait in a parking lot to intercept the armored truck?"

"...Yep."

"Allow me to repeat. Armored. Fucking. Truck."

"...Yeah."

"How the fuck are they going to get into an armored truck?"

Jack emitted a long 'are you stupid' sigh, sending a facepalm look across the table at Shawn.

"You have a proclivity for forgetting the skills your employer has."

"That is all fine and good Jack, but those trucks are built to withstand pretty much everything."

"The trucks themselves might be, but the locks on the back doors aren't. If I can get close enough to the back, I can blast the lock off with a shotgun. She'll have to drive in front of the truck to keep it blocked in, then I can tranq whoever is inside and drive it to the industrial park."

"I'm going to drive in front of it? Wouldn't it be better if I were to be in the car with you?"

"I can do it, Lizzie," Chris said. "Don't worry, I won't let your precious boyfriend get hurt."

A strange expression came over Jack's face, and it took him a couple of seconds to realize that everyone was staring at him.

"What? I've never been referred to as a 'boyfriend' before, it's strange."

"What would you prefer to be called? My partner? And Jack is just fine at getting himself hurt, so it is rather out of your control anyways."

"When have I ever gotten myself hurt?"

"Oh goodness, how much time do we have?"

She nudged Jack's knee with her foot under the table, smiling at him just as Ringa clapped her hands.

"I think we have enough of a plan ironed out for now. We can go over more specific details later tonight. Now that we're all here together, I think we deserve a chance to learn a bit more history between the two of you."

She had told Ringa all about herself, but she had strategically left Jack out of most of the stories, just mentioning him briefly and only when absolutely necessary. Talking about him at the time had caused too much turmoil in her head.

" _Fine_ , storytime it is then," she said with a small smile on her face, exchanging a look with Jack, who grinned back at her.

* * *

They moved into the living room, her and Jack sitting on the right couch, and the other three sitting on the left. Sunlight was streaming in through the large window behind them.

"So, how did the two of you first meet?" was the first question, coming from Ringa.

"Wow, diving right in, then?" Jack asked with a smirk.

"You two are so in tune with each other that I have to know how it all started."

"Right. So, shall I answer, or do you want this one?" she asked him.

He watched her for a moment, and she realized that their version of events might be slightly different.

"I'll take it, I suppose. Prepare yourselves," he said, getting comfortable on the couch. "So, my dear Lizzie here used to wear corsets, well,  _a lot_. Bloody annoying things, for several reasons."

"Can't breathe in them, especially in hot weather, they  _hurt_ , and they took forever to put on," she explained.

' _Women in London must have learned not to breathe.'_

She smiled to herself at the memory.

"Yep. Well, on this particular day, the weather was, in fact, quite warm, and she had to put on a dress for a promotion ceremony for our mutual deceased friend James Norrington."

"I already told you, he wasn't your _friend_."

He gave her a playful glare before continuing.

"He also chose this day to ask for her hand in marriage in a rather unfortunate location."

"The battlements," she said, cringing.

" _The battlements_. I'm still not sure if she fainted from the proposal or the corset, but either way, she ended up in the water. Lucky she survived the fall. Lots of rocks."

She looked around at him in annoyance.

"His proposal wasn't unattractive enough for me to  _faint_ from it."

It truly wasn't. She may not have been in love with James, but she wouldn't have protested too loudly to building a future with him, and she suspected that she might have grown to love him. That was of course before she met Jack. After that, she was well and truly ruined for anyone else.

"...If you say so.  _Then,_ since the Royal Navy evidently couldn't swim, it was up to me to fish her out of the water."

"You  _saved_ her life? No wonder she fell in love with you then," Ringa exclaimed, beaming.

"Oh, don't get ahead of yourself. She was still very much enamoured with another mutual friend, William Turner, at the time. Besides, I didn't have any inkling that she  _was_ in love with me. I spent until like four days ago thinking she wasn't.  _Anyways_ , I fished her out of the water, and then cut her corset off to get her breathing again."

A wave of guilt washed over her when she realized that she had made him wonder and long for that length of time.

"Got laid out on the dock in just my shift, which was practically translucent, for everyone to see."

"Liz, I don't think Jack minded."

"I'm sure he didn't. Look, he is grinning like a fool at that memory."

And he was, looking directly at her, his eyes sparkling.

"Figured out that she just happened to have a cursed medallion on her person, and then I was put under arrest immediately after by her father and Norrington. They apparently didn't like me saving Lizzie. I guess they would have preferred it if she had drowned."

" _Jack_. Obviously, they put you under arrest for being a pirate, which is still ridiculous, but they didn't arrest you for saving me."

"Uh huh. After the customary you're-a-bad-guy-and-everything-you-do-sucks speech from Norrington, with added in 'shoot hims' and 'hang hims' from her lovely father, they threw some shackles on me."

He paused to take a sip of his coffee while their audience waited, almost bouncing up and down with anticipation.

" _This_ is where it gets interesting. Our dear Lizzie here decided to gallantly protest my arrest by placing herself between Norrington and myself, saying something about how I saved her life."

She raised a hand to stop him from continuing.

"He saved my life, and I was protesting his execution, remember that, because those details apparently became fuzzy to him when he decided to use me as a hostage, nearly choking me to death with his shackles."

"Oh come on, don't exaggerate."

" _They hurt_."

"So apparently bondage doesn't happen ever…" Shawn said from the end of the couch, rather quietly to himself.

Jack facepalmed, not even bothering to tell him off.

"Thank you, Shawn, for that lovely commentary," Chris deadpanned. "Continue, please."

"As she was saying," Jack started, ignoring the pointed stare she was giving him, "I did use her as a way of escape. We had a lovely little moment where she re-armed me with my sword, belt, pistol, and my hat. She called me despicable, I told her that she owed me, then I pushed her into her future fiance while trying not to get shot to death."

The other three sat in silence for a moment.

"Well, I can certainly see how the tone of that first meeting carried through the rest of your relationship. You two are really the ride or die type, huh?" Chris said, laughing.

"Then what happened?" Ringa asked. "When did you two see each other next?"

"In the middle of a ship battle, actually-"

"Well, technically, I saw her in a cave surrounded by a bunch of treasure right before Will Turner thought she was going to be executed for her blood to break a curse, but who cares about specifics?"

She glared at him, shoving him with her foot.

" _Anyways_ , he kind of suddenly appeared in the middle of a ship battle, and once again, sort of saved my life, just before rudely interrogating me about the medallion-"

"I don't think I was  _rude_. I just asked you where it was, and you called me a wretch. I think it was  _you_ who was rude."

"Well excuse me for thinking that you didn't save me to save me. I thought all you cared about was that bloody stupid necklace."

"No, I happened to care rather a lot about the person that was supposed to be  _wearing_ the necklace too, but since we were under attack from undead pirates, I thought it rather pertinent to locate the object they were trying to find."

A brief flutter in her stomach had her smiling softly.

"Then, the amazing brave intelligent William Turner decided to get both Lizzie and me marooned on an island after he exercised his extremely impressive negotiating skills."

"You could tell the story without bashing him at every opportunity."

"Did you think that his negotiating skills were  _good?_ "

"Well, no, but-"

"Exactly. Anyways, we got marooned on an island. This darling," he pointed at her, "decided to try and convince me that I was trying to trade Will for a ship, and then she chased me through the jungle interrogating me until I finally confessed to her that I only spent three days on the island, and I was almost passed out drunk for all of them."

"At which point you handed me a bottle of rum."

"My thought process behind that was that you could use a little bit of rum so that you didn't try to kill me at some point. So, after that, she followed me back to the beach and started interrogating me again-"

" _No,_ I didn't. I just asked you if you lied about everything else too."

"So I showed her my two bullet wounds, my pirate brand, and another scar on my arm. It seemed to convince her that I was not just a drunkard pirate."

"Then he proceeded to try and convince me to  _sing_. As if…"

"Yeah, and right after, you told me that you would sing if you got drunk."

Their audience laughed.

"She did, in fact, sing by the way as we danced around a campfire, but I am unconvinced that she was  _actually_  drunk."

"I was...tipsy."

"Well,  _I_ was drunk. I think I actually passed out."

"Mhm, probably the only reason that I got away with burning all of your precious rum the next morning."

"She  _burned your rum?_ " Shawn and Chris breathed at the same time.

Jack answered with a deep chuckle, smiling at her.

"I almost shot you for that, you know."

"Jack, you wouldn't harm me if you had the entirety of the United States military threatening your life."

"That's what you think," he said, but his eyes told her that the entire world could threaten him and he wouldn't lift a finger against her.

"Ok, so hostage situation, then stranded on an island. Boy, you two got off to a  _comienzo explosivo_ ," Ringa snickered.

"Oh don't worry, I also became immortal, the first time, very briefly, saved her life  _again,_  and then encouraged William Turner to hit on her. Probably one of the stupidest things I have ever done, to be honest."

"Hey, on the topic of saving lives, I saved yours too. My exemplary acting kept you from getting hanged."

"I would say it was that and Will's talent for sword throwing, to be honest."

"Right, and then you proceeded to fall off of the battlements and disappear from my life for six months, as least until I was arrested along with Will for helping you escape."

She remembered correcting Beckett, rather adamantly, when he forgot the 'captain' in front of Jack's name.

He turned to address the other three.

"Lizzie took it upon herself to come and find me in Tortuga to save Will, or at least she claimed, though we both know it was really because she missed me. Then she spent two weeks trying to seduce me-"

" _Excuse me_? I did nothing of the sort."

He raised an eyebrow at her.

"Oh  _really_? Because I seem to remember-"

"I didn't  _say_ that there was no seducing happening, but I think it came from you first."

"...Oh. Yeah, I can see an argument being made there. You certainly did your fair share of it though. 'You're going to want to know what it tastes like'  _indeed_."

She had to laugh at Jack's perfect impersonation of her, as Chris, Ringa, and Shawn all made noises of 'too much information'.

"I know, I know, out of context it sounds like she wants me to...well, it was  _actually_ about how I wanted to know what glory tasted like. See, she had it in her head that I was a good man, and she wanted me to prove it."

_And the irony is that she had wanted him to do exactly what he was referencing._

_Which he did, happily, eventually._

"You still are a good man."

"And this grand mission of hers was nicely topped off when she shackled me to the mast of my own ship because she didn't have enough faith in me to let me sacrifice myself."

For one terrible second, she thought he was pissed at her all over again for it, and he had been, when they had first gotten him back. He didn't speak to her for two weeks until finally, he had ducked into her cabin on the  _Pearl_ , and they had a lengthy conversation.

But the tone of his voice was teasing, and he added just enough softness to it to let her know that he  _was_ teasing.

"In reality, it was because I wanted to have sex with him so bad that I had to kill him to rid myself of the desire. Didn't really work though, in case anyone was wondering."

"Yeah, we figured that much out for ourselves," Chris said, snickering.

_She had wanted sex and so much more from him._

_And now she had it._

She watched, smirking, as all four of them descended into a fit of giggles.

"The only other significant event was Jack voting me in as Pirate King. I would ask him to co-rule with me a little over a year later. Otherwise, it was just a bunch of boring ship battles and annoying maelstroms. Anyways, storytime is over."

"Yeah, we do need to iron out the last few details of this hell plan," Chris said, sighing.

"Lizzie and I are going to be driving the McLaren and the Viper, and we are going to park in that lot until we get the go ahead from Shawn to give chase. Have we decided what kind of catastrophe we are going to orchestrate?"

"Bomb threat seems the most efficient. Perhaps we could make them think that there are several. One in the station, and one in the Department of Health next door."

"And how are we going to get the threat out?" she asked.

"I can do that," Jack said. "I'll call the police station on a burner phone from in the car."

"As soon as they get the threat, they are going to alert the bomb squad, the whole she-bang," Shawn said. "Evacuation and evidence transport will begin immediately too, since it is a high risk area. They will most likely be taking all of the high-profile evidence with them to Hampstead. You'll have to be careful about which one you grab, Jack."

"K, and good, lots of chaos. Everyone will be distracted. Also, shotguns are loud, so we will need some kind of distraction along the way."

"I can handle that. I will send so much noise within a three mile radius that you could fire a tank and no one would notice. Ambulances, fire trucks, everything will come heading your way. But that means that you will have a time limit to get that back door open," Ringa explained.

"I don't miss, so don't need to worry about that. Give me about two minutes."

"That's about all you are going to get anyway."

"Right."

Suddenly a phone rang, and Chris dug around in his pockets for a moment.

"Ah, this must be the car. Hello?"

"Ready for pickup? Great, we'll head there now," he said, then hung up. "Shawn, you're going to come with me so you can drive back here in my car."

* * *

Ringa went to make herself something to eat after Shawn and Chris left, while Jack pulled out his phone.

"Calling Suzuki?"

"Yeah, gotta update her or she'll try and call me."

He put the phone on speaker again.

"Jack, a pleasure."

"Likewise. We have a plan figured out now. We should have the box in our possession by Monday night."

"Good. Listen, I told the….damn, I told the cartel you are involved. I had no choice, they needed to know that I had hired someone else. Arturo didn't seem too broken up about it. He approved, actually."

"Arturo? Yeah, we've met before. I forget what I did for him though. Might have acquired some guns for him or something. Hey, out of curiosity, how much does the cartel know about the evidence and the entire case?"

"The case? They only know that the Yakuza are trying to frame them for a murder. Why?"

" _Fuck_...well, it's not just a murder. The man that the Yakuza member murdered was a Japanese prosecutor looking into one of the sex trafficking operations that the Yakuza has in Russia."

"Holy  _shit._ "

"Yeah, that's not all. In the process of getting the Brits to store the evidence, the Japanese found out that the Brits were investigating the same trafficking ring, just from the Russian side of things."

"...So, the British think that the cartel is part of this sex trafficking thing because they 'killed' the prosecutor?"

"Yeah, that's about it."

"One giant clusterfuck, pretty much, then. Well, in any case, despite the cartel being the...well, the  _cartel_ , they are innocent in this whole mess, with the exception of having the property that I want. Listen, Jack, I really mean it when you can't fuck this job up."

"Yeah, you told me that."

"I meant it. The thing they have of mine is...rather valuable."

"I get it. I'll get the evidence to you, don't worry. You're coming here to get it, yeah?"

"Most likely."

"Good, Mexico does not sound appealing at the moment."

They hung up at the same time.

"You know, when I accepted this stupid job back in India, I really didn't think that we were going to be in the middle of an international case involving two crime syndicates, and three different governments. Fuck me," Jack grumbled, dragging a hand through his hair.

"Can't say I did either. But like you said, we'll deal with it."

She smiled at him as he crawled across the couch towards her, covering her body with his, leaning down to kiss her.

"Mmm, I can always count on you to take my mind off things," he purred against her lips.

"Maybe, but I certainly put a different part of you  _on_ things."

"Cheeky-"

"Did you two forget that I existed?"

They both looked up to see Ringa standing over them, holding a sandwich.

"... _No_ , not exactly. I just don't think Jack particularly  _cares_."

He shifted off of her, chuckling.

"Sorry Ringa, I get carried away sometimes."

" _Aparentemente_. Actually, could I talk to you for a second, Jack? Alone?"

"...Uh, sure, I guess. Let's go out on the patio."

She watched the two of them disappear, briefly considering spying on them, then deciding against it. But the curiosity about what Ringa wanted to talk to Jack about certainly didn't go away.

* * *

He watched her with a cool expression on his face as they sat down at the table, putting up just a little bit of a guard. This woman may be Lizzie's best friend, but that didn't mean he had to completely trust her, at least not yet.

"You don't trust me. At least not completely," she said with an equally neutral expression.

"I don't trust anyone completely."

"Except her."

"Except  _her_."

"What a remarkable thing. A man like you, guarded against the world, so skilled, could get by without a partner, able to turn into a killer at the snap of a finger,  _opening_ yourself up to Lizzie. Almost too good to be true."

He knew that. He and Lizzie were the product of pure luck, of everything going right when it needed to.

" _She_ is remarkable. I certainly didn't fall in love with her by accident."

That was true beyond a reasonable doubt. Every time he looked at her, she reminded him of how naturally they flowed together, how it had always been like that,  _peas in a pod_.

"You would die for her? By  _choice_ , I mean."

He would fling himself in front of anything to save her life if it came down to it. Tanks, firing squads, bombs, whatever.

"Without even blinking. And I'm sure she would do the same for me."

"Oh, good. Magnifico. I like you, Jack."

"...that's good too, I suppose."

"I can tell just by the way you look at her that you love her very deeply, perhaps more than I have ever seen anyone love another person."

"And the suspicion was your way of communicating that?"

He understood. He would have made sure too, probably.

"No puede dejar ningún ladrillo sin mover. Can't leave any brick unturned."

"I speak Spanish, you know."

"Sorry, old habit from talking to speakers and non-speakers at the same time. Always have to translate myself."

" _Entiendo_. So, how did you meet Lizzie?"

"Now  _that_ is a story. She was staying in the hotel that I was working in at the time. Well, when I say working, I was really hiding. You see, I was also a thief before I met her, but I only stole to make ends meet, not as a career.

"Unfortunately, the manager of the hotel, it was in Brazil, didn't like Mexicans a lot, so he wasn't exactly nice to me. Lizzie used to sit in the hotel lobby quite a bit, always said she didn't like the quietness of her room. Made her ruminate on too many things.

"We became friends, and she learned about what I did for a living. She taught me a few things, shared some knowledge with me, and one night, she was out in the lobby because she couldn't sleep, and the manager came in drunk. Tried to beat me up pretty bad, but of course, Lizzie wasn't a huge fan of that. She fucked the guy up. We never found out if he lived or not.

"She brought me back to her apartment in Florida, where she was living at the time. We bonded over the course of three months. She taught me how to defend myself, I taught her Spanish, and now here we are."

"Did she ever talk about me?"

"Not very often, only if it was necessary to. She did show me a picture of you though, the only one I ever saw. You were standing on a pier in Hawaii, but it was from behind, so I didn't see your face."

"She only showed you one picture? She had a ton…"

"She  _did._ She explained to me that two years prior, a water damage incident in her apartment had destroyed all of them. She was pretty broken up over it."

_Oh, Lizzie…_

"...I can imagine. It was the only thing she had of me, besides my belongings that I was bread-crumbing for her for awhile."

"She told me about that. Made her chase after all of your stuff. It's a wonder that she still didn't know that you wanted her back around after that."

"She didn't know it was me. But I just couldn't shake all association with her, obviously, so I watched from the sidelines as she collected. Finally, I thought maybe she  _did_ want me around, so I took a chance when I learned that we were both in the same place, coincidentally, because I was looking for one of my things too at the time, my  _compass,_ among other things."

"You tried once before that. Her  _garage_. And I knew you were in Mumbai. I kept an eye on you for her."

"And you didn't tell her that I was there?"

"No, I wanted to see if the two of you were really like the damn magnets that I expected you to be. I was proven right."

That reminded him. He had been meaning to apologize for how short he had been with her when he had first revealed himself in the hotel room. The prison stay had made an unfortunate appearance in his mind, sending his emotions buried. Normally, before they had separated, he had shared the details of whatever job he was doing with the understanding that she wouldn't intervene unless he asked her to. He hadn't  _meant_  to make it sound like he didn't trust her.

"I suppose you were. And yeah, I did try to break into her house, before I backpedaled and realized what a terrible idea that was. So instead, I put one of my hair beads on the seat of her Roadrunner, and hoped that maybe she would figure out it was me."

"You two are stupid, you know. Dancing around each other like that for so long without just admitting that you loved each other."

"You don't have to tell me that."

* * *

She pretended like she was busy on her phone when they walked back in the house. Ringa said something about heading out to buy the burner phone that Jack needed to use, and Jack sat back down on the couch with her.

"How much of that did you hear?"

"What do you mean? I wasn't-"

"Bullshit, I'm sure that you were trying to sprout the talent of vampire hearing you were listening so hard."

Seeing how futile it was to deny, she grinned at him.

"Not much, honestly."

He was quiet for a moment, then she raised an eyebrow when he started to chew on his lip.

"What?"

"Um...something that Ringa reminded me of. Back in Mumbai, in the hotel room, when I said that I didn't want you inconveniencing me...I didn't  _mean_ that. I was just being my paranoid idiot self. Didn't mean to make it sound like I didn't trust you anymore. So….um….sorry for that."

Her heart melted at the way he stumbled over the last bit. He really was adorable sometimes.

"You were less angry with me at the time than I expected you to be. Hell, I wasn't sure which reaction I expected out of you if we saw each other again. Don't worry, the one you gave me was fine. Especially...when I found out that you had been in prison...well…"

She paused when she realized that she had a confession of her own from that night, and it was only just now occurring to her how it might of made him feel.

"I have something to apologize for too. When I told you that your effects would make some good money for me, I never actually intended to sell any of it. I convinced myself that I would, that I could part with it, but that was a damned lie if I have ever told one."

"Do you have it all on a mannequin? Somehow I think you do…"

She did, in fact.

"How did you know?" she tittered as she crawled up to snuggle against him.

"You would have the alarming frequent need to gaze at it all the time. Hard to do that if it's in a box."

"Maybe I could get you to put it on for me again."

"Ha! If only for you to take it off right after, just like old times."

"Sure thing, Captain Sparrow."


	12. A Little Too Much Tequila

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is chapter 12! :) Hope everyone enjoys this one.

September 12th, Saturday Evening, 5:30 PM

* * *

Jack had gone down to supervise the McLaren after Chris and Shawn had returned with it, leaving her alone on the couch.

This job seemed like it was starting to become more trouble than it was worth, but with the parties involved, just quitting wasn't really an option. That would leave far too many loose ends and associations that would eventually come back to bite them. Of course, they could just eliminate Suzuki and Handa and call it a day, but it was also a bad idea to just start killing clients over a job that was a little less than ideal. It rather reminded her of an immature child hitting the power button on a game just because they were losing.

There were too many unknowns to back out at this point, and she was sure that Jack had arrived at the same conclusion.

And it wasn't like her and Jack were incapable of doing whatever it was that needed to be done, but the Yakuza and the Cartel weren't exactly a fun sandbox full of toys. More like a sandbox that some crazy psychopath had planted a bunch of hidden razor blades in.

Besides, danger excited her, and she knew just by the look in Jack's eyes when he had figured out the scope of the job that the prospect excited him too, but whether that was a good thing remained to be seen.

Just then her phone buzzed in her pocket. She tugged it out to see that she had a message from Jack.

' _Hey, you didn't tell me that you lost all of your pictures of me, by the way.'_

' _::sigh::, did Ringa tell you?'_

' _Mhm.'_

' _They were all in a box on my dresser in the apartment I had at the time. The ceiling in the apartment above me started to leak, washing machine issues or something, and soaked the entire box.'_

' _Couldn't have saved them?'_

' _I was gone when it happened, so by the time I got back, they were practically mush.'_

' _Except the one on the pier?'_

' _I kept that one in my wallet, actually. :)'_

' _Of all the pictures, you pick one that doesn't even have my face in it?'_

' _Maybe I like staring at your arse more than your face.'_

' _Wouldn't surprise me. :P'_

' _And I suppose that you still have all of the pictures you took of me?'_

' _Of course I do. If you would have looked a little closer in my CD shelf while you were laying out your brilliant little seduction plan, you would have seen that in the bottom left corner, I have four albums of them.'_

Her heart warmed a little at that, even going as far as to make her quiver a bit with glee.

' _I only had twenty minutes to get ready. And even the...more risque ones?'_

' _No, no, I keep those next to my bed, in the nightstand.'_

He must have predicted her indignant reaction because another message was sent immediately after before she could type out a response.

' _HAHA, just kidding. Halfway. There is one in there, but the rest of them are in one of the albums.'_

' _Which one is it?'_

' _I mean...you could always go and look at it.'_

' _I don't wanna get up, your couch is too comfortable.'_

' _Right, I think you are just fishing for compliments by making me describe it.'_

' _Is it such a chore to compliment me?'_

' _No, I suppose it isn't. ;) It's the one where you are laying on the beach in the Bahamas. Remember that little pool we found that we had to ourselves for a few days?'_

She did, in fact, remember the pool, and she remembered the precise moment that picture was taken because immediately afterward, a snake had become an uninvited guest on her stomach.

' _Yeah, I remember. The snake, that is. I don't think I have screamed that loud since.'_

' _Well, I beg to differ, but whatever you say.'_

' _::eye roll:: Why that picture?'_

' _Idk. Just the way the light is hitting your skin, and the expression on your face. You looked like you didn't have a care in the world.'_

' _Well, you had just ravaged me senseless, if you recall.'_

' _Oh yeah, I forgot about that part. :P'_

' _Sure you did.'_

' _So, did you enjoy the reminiscing?'_

' _Yeah, most of it.'_

' _What do you mean?'_

' _I just get afraid every time the...well, every time it is brought up that you are angry with me all over again.'_

' _Oh love, don't be. I stopped being angry about that a long time ago. You know that.'_

' _I know, but...Idk, it just still makes me uneasy.'_

' _Should I come up and kiss you to make you feel better? :)'_

' _Maybe later, you need to make sure that car is ready to go.'_

' _Right. Also, I enjoy how you summed up a large portion of events as 'boring ship battles and annoying maelstroms.'_

' _Well, was I wrong? Maybe not all of the ship battles, but that one was just a bunch of rain and being worried about you.'_

' _I was worried about you too, you know.'_

' _I wasn't the one being hunted by Davy Jones.'_

' _True, but I was in love with you, well, am, but that made it difficult to concentrate.'_

She pushed the phone against her chest, suddenly finding it a bit challenging to breathe evenly. Hearing him verbalize being in love with her was something that she doubted she would ever grow tired of, or  _used_ to.

' _Especially when you decided to engage Jones all by yourself.'_

' _I was feeling brave.'_

' _You're always brave, darling.'_

' _I appreciate the confidence you have in me. So, think we can pull this thing off?'_

' _Well, unless my shotgun chooses literally the worst time to jam up, the cars break, the drivers of the truck are cyborgs, both of us forget how to drive simultaneously, a fucking tornado blasts through, Chris decides that he would rather play with his phone instead of taking the wheel, or you randomly decide to strip and take pictures (would distract me something awful), I think we'll be fine.'_

She was chuckling at the first scenario, and was nearly in tears by the end, pressing out her reply after fixing twenty typos due to her shaking hands.

' _Hahahah. And then we're done. Think we deserve a vacation afterward?'_

' _Sure we do. Where were you thinking?'_

' _Hmm...maybe Paris?'_

' _...Paris? Have to say that the city has lost its charm over the years…'_

' _Fine. You suggest something.'_

' _I was thinking Australia.'_

' _Oh, the land where literally everything can kill you. Can't wait. How about Lima?'_

' _Go hang with the Incas? We could do that.'_

' _Lima it is, then.'_

* * *

They were all sitting in the garage now, watching Shawn toil away on the McLaren.

"So, let's talk time. How much time do we have until they realize that there are no bombs?" she asked, mostly directing the question at Jack.

"Well, both buildings are fairly large, should take a bomb squad about a half hour for each one," he answered, taking a drag of the cigarette in his hand.

"And we have about six-ish minutes to get the evidence out of the truck from the time that it we drive out of the parking lot?"

"Sounds about right. Four of that is going to be getting into position around the truck, and getting the truck to the industrial park. We only have two to get the door open."

"Just don't miss," Chris said, watching Shawn swear at the car.

"Ha, I  _never_ miss."

"And once they  _do_ realize that there are no bombs, how are we going to escape undetected back here?"

"I'm going to shut down the traffic cameras on that stretch of road for as long as I can," Shawn said from the other side of the car. "Should make the city blind to you."

"Good, well, unless something goes horribly wrong, we should have the box ready for Suzuki to pick up tomorrow night," she mused, sidling over to Jack to lean against him, sliding her arm around him. He leaned down to kiss the top of her head.

Just then, the front door of the house opened and closed, and Ringa came bounding down the stairs, a burner phone in her hand.

"Here, this should do nicely," she said, handing the phone to Jack.

"Thanks."

"No problem. So, I think that since we are all work no play tomorrow, we should have a nice big dinner tonight."

"...Ringa," she started, looking around at the other three, "I'm not sure that any of them, including me, can cook well enough to have a 'big dinner'."

Jack shrugged against her, not bothering to argue the point.

" _Amiga_ ," she admonished, drawing out the syllables. " _I_ can cook, or did you forget?"

No, she hadn't forgotten how well Ringa could cook, but she hadn't wanted to impose that on her.

"I didn't want to-"

"Oh,  _nonsense_ , not a problem at all. What would you all like?"

"I mean...do you have like...a menu prepared or something?" Jack said with a grin, giving Ringa a 'give me' motion with his hand.

"Ha! No, no menus here, but I can make any Spanish or Mexican dish that your heart desires."

"Tell you what, why don't you just surprise us," he replied.

"Sure thing. Just one question. How much spice can all of you handle?"

"Well, considering the fact that this crazy man here eats habaneros like candy, he can handle as much as you want to give him. But the rest of us," she sliced her finger through the air to motion at all of them, "keep it on the mild side."

"Habaneros are  _good_ ," Jack whined, tickling her stomach where his hand was resting.

"I mean, they  _are_ when they're  _in_ something, but not plain."

"Just means more for me then."

She rolled her eyes at the snobbish tone in his voice.

" _Oh_ , by the way, since we need to make up for lost pictures, let's whip one up right now," he said into her hair, pulling out his phone and turning the camera on.

"Right  _now_? I look like I just crawled out of bed!"

"Lizzie, you could take a picture with a paper bag on your head and you would still look beautiful."

Ringa made an 'aww' noise somewhere behind them, instigating another eye roll.

"Fine."

She attempted to fix her hair somewhat as Jack held his phone out in front of them, but instead of facing the camera, he decided to kiss the side of her head, making her picture grin turn into a wider genuine one as he pressed the shutter button.

"Perfect. And we can take plenty more, darling."

* * *

Finally, Shawn finished the car, grumbling to Jack about how he wanted to be fired after the long and grueling process.

"Shawn, where else on earth would you get paid to fix a McLaren F1 for a man that is possibly wanted in," he paused to count on his fingers, "five different countries?"

"Yeah, I have a pretty cushy job, I know, but…"

"But shut the fuck up, that's what."

He got hit with Shawn's middle finger, but they were both sniggering at each other.

As a group, they collectively decided on nachos and the ever-delicious cemita poblana, moving upstairs to sit at the kitchen table while Ringa shot around the kitchen like a pinball, insisting that she didn't need any help.

After about an hour, they all eyed the sandwiches as they were placed in front of them.

"Mmm, smells delicious, Ringa," Jack said, giving her an appreciative glance.

"Thank you. Maybe I can give you cooking lessons some time."

"Ha, we'll see. Lizzie might go spare if I get any more talented."

"Are you  _seriously_  that egotistical?" she asked, swatting his arm.

"Darling, how long have you known me?"

"A long time, but-"

"And you are just now figuring out that I have a huge ego?"

He really didn't, actually. He just liked to act high and mighty because it got on her nerves. There were a great many things that he was insecure about, but most of them dealt with anything involving vulnerability, rather than physical or skill-level related things.

"Whatever, Jack."

They dug into the food, and then Ringa made a strange noise, pushing back her chair suddenly to head back into the kitchen.

"Is something on fire? Damn…" Jack said after he swallowed, looking over to where the cupboards were being banged open.

"No, I just forgot the most important thing."

"...which is?"

Finally, she emerged with a bottle, holding it above her like it was the second coming of Christ.

"Tequila, of course. Can't have Mexican cuisine without it."

* * *

"So, I updated Suzuki on everything. She knows everything we know, and probably some things that we don't know, but that's neither here nor there," Jack announced.

"That's good," Chris said, already pouring himself a second glass of alcohol. "Out of curiosity, once this job is over, how do we plan to actually like...get out of the picture?"

"Well, we just have to keep ourselves as uninvolved as possible. As it stands, the only thing we are involved with is the box. The case, the war between gangs, none of that is relevant. And I don't forsee any other developments that will require us to continue to be involved."

"Jack and I are planning a vacation to Peru after this is all over."

"Oooh, Peru is beautiful," Ringa exclaimed, wiping a bit of guacamole off of her mouth.

They talked about random subjects, the bottle of tequila slowly turning into a bottle of nothing, until they were all just a little tipsy.

" _I have an idea_ ," Ringa said with a dramatic flair.

"And what's that?"

Of course, Jack was the only one that still sounded somewhat sober. Damn the man and his tolerance.

"We should play  _Never Have I Ever_."

Jack raised an eyebrow, leaning back in his chair.

"Somehow, I feel like this is just an attempt to learn some dirty history."

Even though Jack may  _seem_  sober on the outside, just the right amount of alcohol had a tendency to loosen his tongue  _just_ on the wrong side of trouble. Or  _right_ , depending on how a person looked at it.

"...maybe, maybe not. Are you up for it?"

"I'm up for anything. How about you, love?"

"Sure, I don't see why not."

She probably would have been against it if that warm fuzzy feeling of being buzzed wasn't currently plaguing her.

" _Excellent_ , I'll start."

"...wait, wait just a minute," Chris slurred. "We need...like... _cards_ or something, don't we?"

"... _oh_ , yeah, I suppose we do. Maybe we can just use our phones."

After an unnecessarily long time, they worked out a way to download an app that was literally just for having a digital version of the answer signs.

"Ok,  _now_ I'll start. Never-"

"Wait…..are we playing for….um, points? Or just whether we have done the thing or not," Shawn asked as he stared intently at his glass.

"Just whether we have done it or not.  _Anyways_ , never have I ever driven drunk."

Jack snorted, holding up his phone in the affirmative, while Chris, Shawn, herself, and Ringa all said no. They all stared at Jack, waiting on him to tell the story.

"Well, I don't know whether it  _counts_  necessarily, because I was on a track, not in public, but in 91', I almost flipped a truck because I was plastered. And it takes a lot to get me that drunk, so you can imagine how much I had to drink."

It did take a-fucking-lot to get Jack drunk, like, way too much in her opinion.

"My turn," he said before anyone else. "Never have I ever given someone a sex toy as a present."

Chris burst out laughing. "Oh fuck, you asked that one on purpose just to get me to tell the story. Ok, so...one time, it was Christmas, and all three of us, me, Jack and dipshit over there looking at his glass like it's fucking offending him or something, were sitting in the living room, exchanging joke gifts-"

"And  _this motherfucker_  thought it would be funny-"

"...hey, it's my fucking story, Jack.  _I thought_ it would be fucking hilarious to buy Jack a mystery gift from Adam and Eve dot com. Even I didn't know what was gonna be in there."

"Yeah, well, I fucking opened it and experienced one of the few times where I have seriously contemplated drowning myself in my own pool."

Shawn was laughing hysterically, trying to chime in at random intervals, before giving up, just accepting that he sounded like a dying seal.

"...there was a...oh my  _god_ , there was a fucking big ass bright fucking pink  _cock ring_ sitting in the box…" Chris finished in between wheezes.

"Oh my god, Jack. Yeah, you definitely need a cock ring for sure," she managed to get out, tears pouring down her cheeks. "My turn. Never have I ever consumed more than two illegal drugs."

Jack sighed dramatically, giving her an amused glare.

"Story time again then, apparently. So, this happened right when the LSD craze hit in the '60's, and I, of course, wanted to see what it was all about. I snagged some, I forget where from, and took it-"

There was a collective pitying 'ooooh' from the group.

"No no no, the story doesn't stop there. I also happened to have a little ecstasy in my pocket, and being my infinitely intelligent self, popped that too.  _Then_ , I had the brilliant idea to go back to the hotel where Lizzie and I were staying."

She was barely holding back laughter as she watched Jack's eyes sparkle at the memory.

"I went down to the pool, which is a very bad idea if you are in the middle of an acid trip, in case any of you were inclined to try...let's just say that it was my first and only time taking LSD. Your turn, Chris."

"Hold on a fucking minute, are you not going to tell us what you saw?"

Jack's face turned from amused to mildly uncomfortable. "I would need  _a lot_ more to drink if I were to finish that story.  _Your turn_."

"Fine, never have I ever walked in on someone else having sex."

"What, do I get to tell all of the stories tonight?" Jack whined as the rest of them answered no. "Fuck me, alright, fine. This happened just a year ago I think, and to this day, it is still one of the most soul scarring things I have ever witnessed. You know that saying 'what has been seen cannot be unseen'? Well, that applies here."

Shawn was shifting around in his seat, looking worried.

"Yeah, you remember how I was...not exactly  _pissed_ , just...offended that... _that_ was happening on my...oh yeah, by the way, this happened on the living room couch, in case anyone planned on sitting on it ever again.

"I walked in from a trip to meet a client at Casamia, where I took you Lizzie, and dumbfuck here, in his infinite wisdom, thought it was a good idea to have sex on my couch. Now, normally, I wouldn't be that annoyed by it, maybe a little peeved, but he was...he was using the back door instead of the front door, and this  _girl_  was making a fucking noise that I still don't think was human to this day."

"If there has ever been an occasion where Jack almost vomited from disgust, it was then."

"If there has ever been an occasion where I needed bleach for my eyeballs, that was it."

"...I mean, I didn't plan on you being home so soon, and I also didn't plan on doing it  _there_. It just kind of happened. Anyways, my turn. Never have I ever set myself on fire."

Everyone but Chris answered no, and when all of their eyes were directed at him, he shook his head.

"Nope...sorry, that is a story that will not be told tonight."

* * *

Oh,  _god,_ that was fun," she said as they stumbled into Jack's bedroom, chests aching from laughing so hard. He immediately descended on her, pushing her back against the door.

"Mmm, I agree. You're really pretty when you laugh." He kissed his way up her neck, across her jawline, before claiming her mouth in a surprisingly tender kiss, his hands disappearing under her shirt to curl around her breasts. "Damn, as much as I would like this to continue, you are approaching drunk, and we really need to get to sleep."

She pouted but agreed with him nevertheless. "Maybe tomorrow night, then?"

"Most definitely, darling."

They undressed, crawling into bed together, neither of them having any memory of when it was that they fell asleep.


	13. In the Darkness of the Morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 13! Hope you all enjoy! :) As always, sunlight literally bursts out of my skin when I get comments, so please leave me your thoughts. I respond to everyone! :)

September 13th, Sunday Morning, 5:30 AM

* * *

The world blinked back into existence with soft kisses on the skin of her chest. Colors poured into her eyes in the dim early morning light coming through the window every time she exerted the strength to open and close them. The orange of the rising sun that danced across the bedroom walls, the pale yellow that tinted the air, the stark charcoal of the bedroom, and the bottomless black of the floor, resembling a pool of ink more than hardwood. It could only be about 5:30.

Her body felt heavy as she relaxed back into the soft mattress, becoming vaguely more aware of the  _other_ person in the bed as the seconds, minutes, or whatever they were ticked by.

"...Lizzie," a sleepy voice said into the bend of her neck, warm breath ghosting over her skin, sending gooseflesh down her form of its own volition. A voice that held so many different flavors, facets, a voice that could turn into the equivalent of a chip of onyx, hard and unyielding, a voice that could leave his mouth like a string of velvet, making her clench her thighs no matter where he was in the room, a voice that could fracture into uneven pieces, belaying the sadness he kept buried deep within, over dark spots in his history that were buried with it, a voice that could turn her blood into fire when it growled against her lips as his body moved within her.

And a voice that could be none of those things, simply a man that really did not want to get out of bed, each word he said heavy with sleep and contentment.

"Mmm," was all she could respond with, eliciting a chuckle from deep within his chest.

"Sleep good darling?"

"Mhm," and she wasn't even sure if she said it out loud or not, as she was quickly drifting back to sleep, only intermittently registering a hand traveling up the side of her body, an arm circling under her to pull her closer, then warm fingers closing around the soft skin of her breast.

_Oh…_

Perhaps her mind wasn't fully awake yet, still drifting in that limbo between reality and the dreamscape, but her body was starting to become sharply aware, as the first pinprick of arousal sailed through her, a tingling sensation that promised something far greater. His thumb and pointer finger teased her nipple to a hardened point, small gasps exiting her lips when his mouth returned to her neck, certainly leaving a mark, not that she minded. He could leave a hundred marks on her skin and she would display them proudly.

Her back arched, bowing delicately like a blooming flower when his hand abandoned her breast to trail down her ribcage, across her flat stomach, and then without any preamble, arrived at her center. She immediately spread her legs when he nudged her thigh, a sigh of contentment making him respond with a noise of satisfaction. She turned her head to meet his lips in a soft kiss, becoming more aggressive as his fingers dipped into the well of wetness, another noise sounding in his throat, but this time, one of his own arousal, the physical evidence prominent against her hip.

The first of many jolts of pleasure rocketed through her when he slid two fingers into her, starting at the tips, sinking them in slowly, then withdrawing to repeat the motion, making her realize exactly how  _wet_  she was when he met absolutely no resistance against her skin.

She took a shuddering breath, scooting closer to him, raising one leg higher to give him better access, quietly moaning again when he curled his left hand around her hip, undulating her body to match the rhythm of his fingers.

"... _Jack_... _I need…"_

While she loved the friction, the intimacy of him being inside of her, her clit was beginning to ache with need, a burning sensation that edged  _just_ on this side of the line between pain and pleasure.

" _This_?" he asked when he finally slid his fingers out of her, slowly trailing them over the peaks and valleys of her slick folds to arrive at what she so desperately wanted him to touch, making lazy circles around it, taking his time, giving her the clear message that  _he_ would decide when she got to have that ultimate pleasure.

"... _oh god yes_ ," she breathed, sliding her arm around him for something,  _something_ to keep her from floating straight off of the bed into the stratosphere. Needing  _more,_ she pushed her chest up, and let her mouth fall open in satisfaction when he attacked her nipple with his full lips, grazing his teeth against it, sucking on it roughly, smiling against her when her left hand came up to bury itself in his hair.

Remarkably he wasn't thrusting his hips against her, and she marveled at his level of self-control through the haze of sensation he was concocting, deciding at the same time to give him some pleasure of his own. Unwinding her right arm from underneath his body, she let it trail down his chest, down the hard muscle of his stomach to arrive at his straining length, making a delicious growl spill out of him onto her breast when she wrapped her fingers around it.

"... _Christ_ ,  _I love you_ …" he whispered gratefully. As she gave him slow strokes, exploring his ridges and shape, even though she had it memorized by now, he abandoned her clit, sliding his fingers back into her entrance, thrusting again in the same rhythm of her ministrations.

Heat was growing inside of her body, little flashes of it appearing all over under her skin, the first sign of danger, because the level of pleasure that he made her feel  _was_   _dangerous_. The downhill slide into something that stripped her of reality, of her sense of self, of everything besides a frantic and almost hysterical need for relief, was a trip of wonder, with a shining precipice at the very end that she willingly shoved herself off of every damn time.

He grew even harder in her hand if that was possible as she sped up her strokes, then faltered when he withdrew his fingers once more and trapped her clit between them, massaging it, alternating between movements faster than she could keep up, but  _oh,_  she didn't mind, didn't mind at all as she started to tumble, the knot in her stomach tightening, his hand abandoning her hip to curl around her other breast as he claimed her mouth in a kiss that told her how much he liked what she was doing to him with how thoroughly he swept his tongue against hers, how much fervor he used to plunder her.

She broke away to thrust her chest at him once more, and he gave her a noise that was a cross between a laugh and a moan as he descended upon her nipple again, his other hand still massaging her right breast, kneading that nipple between his fingers.

"... _I-I can't...god,_ " was all her fevered brain could formulate as the assault of sensation nearly short-circuited her, but she held on for dear life, certain that he was trying to kill her, and she wasn't about to give in that easily.

Speeding up her strokes on his cock, she inclined her head to latch onto  _his_ neck, letting her teeth sink in just a little bit, before running her tongue over the indentations, letting him know that this was  _not_ a one-sided war.

Then one particular stroke on her clit had her back arching, a fresh wave of heat invading her, her breath starting to come out in small puffs, the function of her brain limited down to his beautiful hand and its movements against her body, because she was speeding towards orgasm at such a pace that left her no choice but to let it come, let it become her master, let it control her in that beautiful moment of abandon that only Jack could bring her to so  _perfectly_.

He rubbed her clit faster, circling around it at a furious pace, cries spilling out of her, her hand on his cock forgotten about as she spiraled out of control, head thrashing back and forth, sweat matting her hair to her forehead.

Jack slipped his tongue back into her mouth just as the fire bloomed in her clit like a fucking explosion, spreading outwards in blinding spidery fissures, making her tear her mouth away from his to cry out against his cheek as each wave of pleasure ripped her farther and farther away from reality, turning her bones to dust, her heart beating at a frantic speed, and she swore she stepped through the gates of heaven at the very peak, before she floated back down through the haze, vaguely registering the soft circles that he was still making around her clit, as the pleasant thought entered her brain over and over again.

This man was  _hers_.

"With me, love?"

"...I... _I think so_ ," she said softly, adding " _terrible man"_ onto it under her breath, earning her a lovely little laugh as he continued to play with her slick folds.

She countered by wrapping her fingers around his length again, teasing them over the tip, changing his laugh into a hiss, a sharp intake of breath sucked in through his teeth.

"I need to be inside of you Lizzie," he whispered, sending a spasm straight to her core, reforging that ball of fire there as she tugged him on top of her, moaning against his mouth when his hips flowed against hers like a dance that neither of them even needed to think about anymore, his right arm holding his body above her.

She pulled his bottom lip between her teeth when he reached down to rub the swollen tip of his length in teasing trails across her wet slit, tingles prickling in her skin at the contact from the after-sensitivity of her orgasm.

" _You want this_?"

He was grinning down at her with his devilish smile, his dark eyes glittering in the dim light of the room.

"I thought you were the impatient one?"

"Maybe I just enjoy teasing you too much."

His voice was husky now, a deep timbre that could probably make her come all by itself if he were inclined to try. She angled her hips, trying to take him in, and he took mercy on her, and himself, when he slid his length deep inside her, slowly, so that she felt every inch, dropping his head down to kiss her jawline as soon as he was fully enveloped.

This moment,  _every_  time he entered her, regardless of how many times it had happened, still managed to steal her breath without the promise of giving it back.

He filled her so perfectly, felt so incredible, so warm, the throbbing matching her heartbeat, reminding her how grateful she was that they were both still alive.

"... _yes_ …" she whispered, wrapping her legs around his waist. He stayed still, supporting himself on his elbows, his biceps pushing her breasts together, a perfect expression of what she could only call love coloring his face.

" _God Lizzie,_ it's been almost 300 years and you still make me lose my mind. A squad of hitmen could come through that door right now and I would be powerless."

"I hope not," she said smiling, softly stroking his face with her thumb. "I don't know what I would do if I lost you for good."

"Love, nothing could take me from you.  _Nothing_."

She tangled her fingers into his hair as he leaned down to kiss her, withdrawing from her, thrusting back in, abandoning her mouth to return to her breast, suckling at her nipple gently.

"Oh god, you feel so fucking good," spilled out, surprising her because he hadn't even really started yet. She felt him twitch inside of her just as he thrust in again. He had always loved it when she told him what he did to her.

"Careful darling, you keep talking like that and this will be over before it even begins," he whispered as he kissed his way from her nipple up to her neck.

"We... _oh_...we both know that isn't true."

She slid her hands around his back, appreciating the way the muscles there rippled as he moved within her.

"I think you underestimate how delicious you sound when I'm inside of you,  _especially_ when you tell me how good I feel."

" _You're delicious_ ," she breathed. "... _god...harder…"_

He claimed her mouth again, raising her legs higher, gripping her hips, and started to drive inside of her without warning, each thrust making her body sink into the mattress, simultaneously sliding it closer and closer to the headboard.

"... _yes, oh fuck yes, just like that_ …"

Heat started to once again radiate out through her body from inside her core, and she could feel Jack's control slipping when her fingernails scratched a trail down his back. He was making beautiful noises where his head was buried into her neck, and then his arms wrapped around her at the same time as she tugged him down to lay flat against her, their skin rubbing together as they both spiraled into the abyss.

Her orgasm struck first, sending her core clenching around him rhythmically, her teeth sinking into his shoulder, but her scream spilled out of her anyway when the very peak of her pleasure nearly killed her with the intensity of its control over her, sending every nerve ending in her body into overdrive. Jack followed almost immediately after, thrusting hard into her twice before his body surged against her with the power of his finish as he spilled himself inside of her, his beautiful voice cursing into the skin of her neck.

Both of their hearts were beating like wild things when their orgasms retreated like a storm clearing, sweat slicking their bodies, and Jack was the first to grin, the first to give her that post-sex chuckle of his, making the aftershocks just a little more intense.

Her eyes fluttered closed when he caressed her lips with a tender kiss, both of his hands threading through her hair.

"I love you, darling."

"I love you t-" she started before he cut her off with another kiss, and then her heart warmed when he  _hugged_ her, cradling her body to his, still inside of her.

"You will  _never_ lose me, do you understand that?"

She nodded against his shoulder, slipping her arms around him too, unwilling to let him go at that particular moment.

"I'll hold you to that promise."

"Oh yeah?"

"Mhm."

More sunlight was shining into the room around the black curtains when he slipped out of her and rolled over onto his back, a lazy smile on his face. She scooted over to him, propping herself up on her elbow to play with his chest, trailing her fingers around the dragon tattoo, feeling his steady heartbeat at the same time.

"Do you think you will get any more?"

"Tattoos? I dunno, maybe. It would have to be something with significance. None of those stupid ones that guys are getting these days...the tribal things...and that disgusting barbed wire around their arms."

"You could get a small version of the mural up there."

"The reaper? Yeah, maybe. Dunno where I would put it though."

"Well, the backs of your arms are still clear. I don't think your two shoulder tattoos wrap around enough to interfere there. Speaking of, what made you decide to have that painted?"

"The wall was boring, and I got sick of it, so I started going to flea markets-"

"Hang on a second.  _You_ went...shopping... _by yourself_?"

He tilted his face to look at her, quirking his eyebrow.

"... _yes_ , I went shopping by myself.  _Anyways_ , I was looking for those little vendor painting booths. I finally found a lady that did fantasy paintings, and she had that one on display. I gave her a grand in cash that day to paint it on the wall."

"And the one in the kitchen?"

"A client painted that one for me instead of giving me money."

"And what did you steal for her?"

"Why do you assume that it was a her?"

"I can just tell."

She made a face of superior intelligence at him, making him reach down to ruffle her hair.

"...I actually didn't steal anything for her."

"So...what did you do?"

His expression turned serious, like a dark rain cloud passing in front of the sun.

"I'm not...sure that you want to know."

That confused her for a moment. She thought that they were done keeping things from each other. He must have noticed her drawing back, retreating from him slightly in apprehension.

"...Lizzie…"

He refused to look at her, looking instead at the sheet that he was fidgeting with.

"Tell me."

Fear was something that she very rarely saw in his eyes, but it was there now, flickering in and out of existence like a faulty light bulb.

"I...I killed someone for her."

It wasn't the bombshell she had been expecting, certainly, but it still twisted her stomach into knots.  _Not_  because of what he had done, but because of how uncomfortable he sounded just mentioning it.

"Why were you worried about telling me that?"

He sat up against the headboard and rubbed his hands over his face.

"Because I don't make a habit of putting the subtitle of hitman on my fucking resume. If I kill people, generally, it's 'cause they got in my way first."

"...Like Russia. And when those idiots broke into your house."

"Exactly."

"But?"

"I was  _hired_  to kill this person. I went after  _him_."

"And?"

He was gazing at her with a strange expression, as though she was not satisfying him with her reactions.

"You don't seem disturbed by it."

"Jack, I'm sure that you wouldn't just kill any random person. What did the guy do?"

"Well according to the fucked up justice system that the UK has, he didn't do anything. You could also blame it on his piece of shit defense lawyer, but that is a different matter altogether.

"His name was Dominic. Dominic Fraser. Big guy, like six foot four. Long track record of violent behavior and criminal activity. Of course, he didn't seem that way when he met  _her_. Seemed normal enough, just another single guy, charming, well off.

"Men like that, they all seem normal for as long as it takes to hook someone in. Six months go by, they start to unravel, their veneer cracks. Once they decide that the person they have won't fight back, they show their true colors.

"They dated for seven months. He started abusing her at just over five months. She put up with it for the remainder of their relationship. Then, he came up drunk one night, more drunk than usual anyway, and forced himself on her.

"She went to the cops the next day, and they arrested him six hours later, once they located him. If the court operated like it was fucking supposed to, he would have ended up behind bars for good. But they got him free because of some evidence technicalities.

"Two weeks go by, nothing, silence from him. Then she got phone calls, threatening her, he would show up and pound on her door, he vandalized her car, all kinds of crazy shit. As you can imagine, she didn't have a lot of faith in the cops anymore.

"She called me. We had bumped into each other several times before, and she knew a little of what I was...talented at, but that is a whole different string of stories. She called me, asked me to come over for the night, just to watch out for the asshole. So I did, and he came. Got a look at him from the balcony in her apartment.

"Told her that I didn't think he was going to stop. He was just on that side of psychotic that he was only going to get worse. So she asked me to take him out. Just like that. No hesitation. Just 'Jack, I need you to kill him'."

He paused, reaching over to the nightstand to light up a cigarette. Talking about things that made him uncomfortable always required some kind of distraction, something else to focus on.

"...How did you do it?"

His dark eyes slid over to hers to regard her behind the smoke, as though he was still debating on how much he wanted to reveal to her. Truthfully, and she wasn't sure of how she should feel about it, the image, the aesthetic of Jack  _hunting_ someone sparked some dark part of her mind, the same part that looked enemies in the eye during her days as the Pirate King, well, one of two, just to sentence them to death.

The dynamic of a person is made of many moving parts, different combinations yielding different results, but the dynamic of a hunter was always the same. Pinpoint focus, a shedding of all other complicated  _humanity_ , turning a person into a weapon and nothing else.

"...Like I said, he was a bigger guy, so I wanted to avoid close contact with him if possible. Not that I couldn't have done it that way, but I would have ended up with more injuries than I wanted. He lived in this little rundown dump apartment building right next to the river. Only came home late at night, around 3 AM. Would sleep for a couple of hours, then head back out.

"I watched him, watched his movements, watched to see if he brought anyone home with him, tracked when he drank, how much he drank etc. On the third night, he took a longer than normal smoke break out by his car, and then I saw that he had a pistol sitting on the front passenger seat. It took me less time to figure out that he planned to drive over to her house to kill her than it did for him to open the car door to get in.

"I only had about five seconds to stop him from driving away, so I abandoned my original plan of sniping him, and put a 9mm bullet in his leg just behind his kneecap instead from where I was across the street on a rooftop. He slid out of that front seat like a wet noodle, screaming and clutching his knee like it was crushing itself.

"He wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, so I went downstairs, across the street, didn't bother to cover my face, and told him what I was going to do and why."

* * *

_His face looked greasy, that special permanent kind of greasy, permeating the skin, pouring out of the skin, lining the eyeballs so that whenever he looked at someone, they felt diseased from his gaze. It was a strange contrast to his perfectly groomed and spiked blonde hair._

" _Who... who the fuck are you," he shouted, sounding like the cliche injured villain in an action movie as he squirmed against the ridge of the front seat, his legs quivering on the pavement._

" _Why does that matter to you? You won't be alive long enough to care."_

" _She fucking...that bitch, she hired you didn't she….fuck…"_

" _No, she didn't. Well, she might've asked me to kill you, but it was your fucking lawyer that signed your death sentence. You might've lived in prison. But you got free, and then you did what all people like you do, people of less than average intelligence. You went after her again."_

_He made a show of looking inside the car, before kneeling down to eye level._

" _From the looks of it, you were planning to drive over there right now to kill her. Can't imagine what else that gun in there could be for."_

" _Fuck you."_

" _You know, you're lucky I have better things to do. If I were a little less busy, I would enjoy causing you tremendous pain. But I will tell you this. Men like you, men that think they wear some kind of fucking crown on their head that allows them to do whatever the fuck they want, you give men like me a bad name."_

_He might be a criminal, but there was no fucking way in hell that he would ever harm anyone who didn't deserve it, especially not a woman. It made him think of Lizzie, and all of the times that he had stepped in for her to fuck someone up who had the unfortunate idea of hurting her. But Lizzie was gone, long gone, hated him for all he knew. He hadn't seen her for 25 years. Not a word, not a phone call, not a letter, nothing._

" _That bitch wasn't shit, she fucking deserved-"_

_His fist connected with the asshole's fake tanned cheek, sending blood shooting out of his mouth, grateful for the distraction. Not that he would ever actually try and talk about it with someone, but thinking about her hurt, and it was an acute pain unlike anything else._

" _There isn't a woman on this planet that deserves to be subjected to you willingly, nevermind by force. And actually, I changed my mind. I do want you to be in tremendous pain, but just for as long as it took for you to cause her pain."_

_He stood up and fired another bullet at the man's crotch, feeling a stark satisfaction at the shrill scream that pierced the air, combined with the gurgle of immediate onset hysterical crying._

" _Let's see, how long did it take, maybe 45 seconds? A minute? Let's go with a minute."_

_The man's arm spastically grabbed at the now mangled mess between his legs, his head thrashing back and forth._

_When something like a minute passed, he stepped up to press his gun to the man's forehead, firing again without preamble, not bothering to take an extra second to look at the corpse._

_Dragging his flip phone out of his pocket, he made a phone call._

" _Chris? Yeah. I need you to clean something up."_

" _Rundown apartment building, right off Holcombe in Bathampton, next to the river."_

" _One body, against a car. Three bullet wounds. 9mm."_

" _Yeah, sounds good. See you tomorrow."_

* * *

"He deserved it, you know," she said once he finished the story.

The next drag of the cigarette lasted a few extra seconds, as though he was trying to delay saying anything else.

"I know. It's just...when you kill someone by choice on your end first, when you go after them, it's more deliberate than when it is just self defense, or defense of someone else. You put more of yourself in it, and it haunts you afterwards, regardless of how much the person deserved it. Do I regret killing him? No. Did I like it? Yeah, a little. Do I wish I didn't have to do it? Every day.

"I went back to her, after he was dead, and told her. She tried to offer me money, but I refused it. Instead, I had her paint the kitchen mural for me. She had her work hung up around her apartment."

It was an interesting contrast, with the reaper above Jack's bed symbolizing the fact that even though they were both immortal, death could be hanging around every corner. Then, the gods and goddesses of the other mural represented a timelessness, and eternity of life. She wondered if he meant the symbolism, or if it was just a coincidence.

"That's enough doom and gloom for now, I think. Let's go back to sleep for an hour or so, love. We have a long day ahead of us."

"Alright, but one more thing."

"What's that?"

"Remember how you told me that I shouldn't be afraid to tell you anything?"

"Mhm."

"Well, that goes for you too. Nothing you tell me will scare me away. I understand you too well at this point."

His eyes softened, and he gave her a soft smile when he laid back down on the bed as she snuggled up against him, enjoying the spicy scent of his skin, and the sturdiness of his chest under her cheek as she fell back asleep.


	14. Synergy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 14! Hope everyone enjoys this chapter! :)

September 13th, Sunday Morning, 7:30 AM

* * *

She stepped out of the bedroom two hours later, the clock reading 7:30, wearing a pair of black jeans and a black t-shirt, her hair tied up in a ponytail. Jack had gotten up a half hour earlier.

"You bothered by something?" came a voice at the end of the hallway. Chris was standing there, wearing a similar outfit of all black.

"Why?"

"I dunno, you just look kind of far away."

She didn't think  _bothered_  was the right word, more like...stimulated. Learning about Jack's past was like brain food for her, she found it fascinating. But...

"Bothered? No, not really."

"So what's up?"

"...Are you my counselor now?"

"No, just can't really afford to have anyone distracted today, and since Jack isn't immediately available-"

"He um...he told me about Fraser."

"...Oh. And?"

"That was one of the jobs that Jack had you do before he permanently hired you, wasn't it? Cleaning up that body."

He nodded, leaning against the wall.

"Yep, the last one, actually. Dumped the body into the river in pieces, cleaned the car up, set it on fire with some gang symbols on it to make it look like gang activity, and then got into his apartment to make sure that there wasn't anything there that was incriminating to Jack. Was reported in the news the next day as a gang hit."

"That makes sense."

"I'm guessing he told you because you asked about the mural?"

"Yeah."

"And you're not freaked out about it?"

"What? About the fact that Jack killed a waste of oxygen for a friend? No, I'm not. I'm...just...it makes me wonder what else he is hiding from me if he didn't feel completely comfortable revealing that."

She wasn't sure that there was anything that Jack could do that would  _freak_ her out.

"...you're not used to Jack hiding things?"

There might have been hesitation, a few moments where he tried to figure out how much he  _wanted_  her to know, or whether it was the right time to tell her, but he had never flat out hid things from her on purpose, not that she could remember anyway. At least, not since Will had left. Before that, he had a grand time telling her half-truths, or spinning things in his favor, but after she gained more of his trust, a remarkable thing after what she had done to him, she became one of his only confidants. There were many times that he would come to the royal chambers just to talk, or to just sit and think about something without disturbance, or until she decided to ask.

"He didn't really before. Told me anything I wanted to know, sometimes things I didn't ask about. The only time he turned noncommunicative was when his ship sunk. But ever since he showed up at the hotel, ever since he brought me here, he has been keeping things away from me. The prison, the drugs, and now Fraser."

It made her a little uneasy, and her professional instincts told her that she should be suspicious of him, that she should be a little wary, but the other side of her knew damn well that he would never hide anything from her that could hurt her.

"...you know," she continued before Chris could respond, "I never expected him to even make it into the damn building when I led the cops to him. There has never been any kind of law enforcement that could sink their claws into him long enough to put him behind bars, with the exception of the day I met him. That's why it didn't seem like such a horrible thing at the time. But if I would have known that he was going to spend four years there, if I would have known that his freedom was going to be taken away, I would have just given him the damn car."

Chris drug his hand over his face, studying her for a second before responding.

"I'm sure he knows that now. And didn't it occur to you that in his mind, he just got you back after 40 plus years of thinking he wasn't going to? I'm sure he feels like any disturbance might send you away again. Jack got into some pretty dark places without you around, all of that stuff, to him, is now the perfect catalyst for you to leave him. There is also the fact that your relationship has new rules now to him since you are  _together_ together."

That  _had_  occurred to her, but she was just now understanding how much it really plagued Jack. It also occurred to her that Jack had never  _been_  in a real committed relationship before.

"I would  _never_."

Just the thought made her physically sick, made her stomach churn, and made a throbbing pain creep into her skull.

"I'm sure he knows that too, but you and I both know that the mind doesn't always operate on what you know."

Just then, Jack appeared from inside the gun vault carrying a shotgun, and looked between the two, a question on his face.

"Everything alright?"

Chris gave her a pointed look before walking into the kitchen. She watched him go, feeling a little trapped. Turning around slowly, she found Jack staring at her with a mildly worried look on his face.

"I...I need," she started, then paused to run a hand through her blonde hair. "I need to talk to you for a second."

"What's u-"

Shaking her head, she pointed at the door behind them, trying to fight off the nerves that had no business being there anyway.

" _No_ , in the bedroom."

She headed in that direction, him following just behind her, and she calmed just slightly when he rubbed his finger across her hip bone. Of course he could tell that she was upset about something. He had always been able to read her, even when she made the slightest clench of her eyebrows, or tensed just a little too much. It was like her emotions were on a bright flashing sign above her head to him.

* * *

When they got there, he set the shotgun against the fireplace and turned to look at her just as she pushed him against the door with her lips on his, a small noise of surprise coming from his throat.

He was looking at her when she broke away, and she held eye contact with him, seeing the question on his face, even a little bit of weariness.

"Listen to me. I don't care what you tell me, or what you are still hiding from me.  _Please_  don't think that there is anything on this planet that would make me leave you. I'm yours, Jack, have been ever since you saved my damn life the first time-"

He opened his mouth to say something, probably to argue that he knew, knew that she was his, or something else to avoid the rest of the conversation, but she cut him off with another kiss.

"I'm  _sorry, so sorry_  for giving you any reason to doubt me. You don't even understand how much I hate that I made you think I no longer cared. I care about you so fucking much that it scares me." Her throat got thicker, and she swallowed a few times before she continued.

"Just because we're actually together now doesn't mean that you need to treat the relationship like it's  _fragile_."

Then she didn't even know what to say anymore as she started to cry softly against his shoulder. His arms came up to circle around her, gently rocking her.

"...I don't  _doubt_  you, love," he said after staying silent for a few minutes. "Please don't think I do. I just...don't feel like I quite deserve to act like I can take you for granted. I've always been like that, always assumed that there must be some catch to everything..."

" _I know_ , and I hate the people that planted that idea in your head, but I promise you, I swear to  _god_  that I will never leave you again, no matter what. I love you, and I am  _so_ sorry that I left you for so long."

She watched his face, blinking away her tears, and pinpointed the beautiful moment when he finally completely believed her, finally allowed himself to truly feel secure in the fact that she wasn't going anywhere. Even if he didn't, she would continue to reassure him as many times as necessary. His hands came up to spread her hair out, then reversed them so that he was pressing her against the door, giving her a mind-numbing kiss of his own, slow and tender, as if he too was trying to communicate everything without saying anything.

When he broke away, he circled his arms around her again, burying his right hand in her hair to push her head into his shoulder gently, whispering a quiet "I love you too" into her ear. He embraced her for what seemed like hours, when in reality it was only a few minutes, the warmth and firmness of his body soothing her mental turmoil until it drifted away, forgotten about. She felt  _safe_.

"I don't blame-" he started, then stopped. "...I'm not angry with you for disappearing. That whole thing is both of our faults. We were both stubborn, both rather stupid, and we piled up too many excuses and  _reasons_  that it just became...something that should have never happened."

He was right, it should have never happened. It was just a clusterfuck of misunderstandings, pride, stubbornness, and what ifs.

"I...I know I told you before that I didn't know you were in jail that long. I actually didn't even know you were in jail  _at all_. I assumed that you never made it there, that you escaped, and that you were just pissed.  _Well_ , I came up with a whole plethora of reasons for why you never tried to contact me, all more unlikely than the previous one-"

"I forgive you for that, alright? Don't worry about it anymore. It won't do either of us any good to keep it in reserve for something to fight about."

"But-"

" _Lizzie_. You know me. When I don't want to forgive someone for something, I fucking don't."

He guided her away from his shoulder to make eye contact with her, searching her face to see if she understood.

"You did hold that grudge against Barbossa for...like...10 years or something," she said with a small smile.

"Exactly. Then I killed him, at least, for a little while,  _bastard_."

Some of the weight lifted off of her as she laughed, kissing him again.

"Let's go get this job done, hm? Then you can show me just how much you love me when we get to Lima," he said, stroking his thumb across her cheek to wipe away the last remnant of her tears.

"As much as I want?"

"Darling, if that entire trip turns into just you tiring me out in the hotel room, you won't hear a peep of complaining from me."

"That would sound plausible if you were capable of being tired out."

"Well, feel free to try and achieve that  _impossible_ goal by any means necessary then."

She laughed, leaning her head back against the door, vaguely hearing Chris shout some kind of 'hurry up' from in the kitchen.

"We better go."

"Can't wait."

* * *

They both emerged from the bedroom at the same time, the shotgun balanced on Jack's shoulder, an all-black Mossberg 12 gauge from what she could see.

"Quick summary of the plan," Jack started once they were all standing in the same place around the kitchen island. "Chris and I will be in the McLaren, while Lizzie will be in the Viper. I will call in the threat from the burner phone, then we will wait for Shawn to give us the signal that they have left the police department. Meanwhile, Shawn will also be shutting down the traffic cameras once they are on the move.

"We'll get into position around the truck while Ringa is creating diversions and distractions. I'll blast the lock off, get inside the truck, dispose of the occupants, and then drive it into the industrial park, find the evidence, then we drive back here as inconspicuously as possible. That sound mostly fault-free?"

"Yeah, sounds about right," Chris said. "Time wise, we have about 45 minutes until the bomb threat is called off, and six minutes to get the evidence. Jack, do they have cameras on the armored trucks?"

"I think they have a dash cam, most likely outside, somewhere on the roof. Lizzie, if there is one, you're going to need to get rid of it right away."

She watched him, nodding, and appreciated how attractive he was when he was being the captain, the leader again. That was one of the things that had made him so attractive to her in the beginning after all. The authority, the power that he held by being a  _captain_ , especially of one of the most feared pirate ships in the ocean, was incredibly alluring and exciting. His ability to exert that authority effortlessly, just in the way he carried himself, in the way that his dark eyes could flash from humored to cold in the blink of an eye, spoke of a vast intelligence, one that aligned with her own so perfectly.

And even now, all of these years later, he still had the same precarious atmosphere swirling around him, a silent warning to anyone who might try to cross him, but now, it was only enhanced, built upon with each person he killed, each time he picked up a gun, each time something else he did was turned into a story, a story told by other dangerous people, a kind of respect thing, where even they had to recognize the skill level that he had.

Yet, he was the sweetest man, the most gentle person with her when she needed him to be, able to wipe away her tears, cradle her until she was happy again, make love to her in such a way that made her believe that nothing would ever be wrong again, look at her with his bottomless dark brown eyes with an intensity that made the rest of the world melt away.

"Here, I got these walkie talkies for all of us. They have a channel jammer in them so no one can link up to their signal besides us," Shawn said, passing them out. "Jack is an egotis-" he started to say into his, before catching the glare that was being sent his way, "-a very talented man that I'm sure will be able to pull the job off perfectly. What? I was just testing them. Making sure they worked…"

"I might start testing my fist on your face to make sure it still works."

That got a laugh out of Shawn, and then she realized that he was as close to an annoying little brother as Jack was ever going to have. He  _liked_ antagonizing Jack, for some unfathomable reason.

"Ok you two, try not to kill each other," she said, smirking at them.

Jack clipped the walkie talkie to the waistband of his trousers, and turned to Ringa.

"I'll let you know when you need to start making calls."

She enjoyed being part of a team like this, where she knew she could rely on everyone in the room to do what they were supposed to do.

"Sounds good, Jack," Ringa answered, giving him a thumbs up.

"We are going to sit in the parking lot for an hour or so, just to watch and make sure there are no immediate concerns that we need to address first. Since our cars are...not exactly going to blend in, we need to make our driving as smooth as possible to attract the least amount of attention. With the road cameras out, it will only be the public eye that we have to worry about. Thankfully, both cars' windows are tinted dark enough to keep our faces hidden."

"Let's go," she said, giving Jack a small smile. Even more than being part of a team, she enjoyed working together with him. They had the perfect synergy, the perfect balance between them to the point where they could pull off an entire job flawlessly without even speaking to each other.

Her, Chris, and Jack walked down to the garage.

"Here, love," she heard from behind her, and barely had time to turn around and catch the keys that were sailing towards her. "Don't crash it."

She smiled at Jack, sticking her tongue out at him. "Wouldn't dream of it."

Climbing in the car, she allowed herself a moment of excitement at driving  _Jack's_  car, much the same as when she used to get giddy at being at the helm of the  _Pearl_. Turning the key, she reveled in the vibrations of the engine, and goosebumps flew across her skin at the sound of it.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket.

' _Damn, I'm almost jealous of my own car.'_

' _It is a nice one.'_

' _You looked like you almost came when you turned the engine over.'_

' _Maybe I did. You can't see my hands. ;)'_

' _You should give me a show with those hands at some point. I miss watching you.'_

She drew in a sharp breath at that. He  _had_ always loved watching her touch herself, his dark eyes following every movement of her hands, fingers, listening to every moan she made.

' _Only if you return the favor. :)'_

She loved watching him pleasure himself too, loved seeing the difference compared to when she did it.

' _Haha, I think I can arrange that.'_

' _Good. Ready to go?'_

' _Chris is bitching, so yeah, probably. Lol.'_

' _Doesn't he work for you?'_

' _Sometimes you wouldn't think so.'_

* * *

It took them about two and a half hours to reach the parking lot. It was just behind the police station. She had only been sitting there for about three minutes when her phone rang.

"Hey."

"Hey, love. I am going to add you to the call with Shawn and Ringa."

He put her through, making it a three-way.

"Ok, now that all three of you can hear me, I am going to give you a rundown of the road plan here. You are parked just behind the police station, and the truck is going to be taking Great George St., which is south of the station, and that turns into Birdcage Walk going west.

"This is the tricky part. They are going to cut through the courtyard of Buckingham Palace for extra security, so you guys will have to wait to intercept until they clear that-"

"Oh damn. I wanted to have tea with the Queen on the way."

"I saw the Queen once. Just a glimpse of her. It's a long story, but I think we made eye contact," Ringa said in the background.

"...I realize that you find all of this to be fun, but I would rather my employer not end up in jail, and I'm sure your girl feels the same way. Lizzie, since you will be in front, you will need to take Waterloo Place, which is a little bit northwest of the lot. That connects to Piccadilly, and you will take a left on that. It will bring you to the A4 motorway. Constitution Road, the road that they will take out of the Palace courtyard, connects to it. As soon as they clear that road and get on Park Lane going northwest again, get in front of them, but stay inconspicuous.

"Jack, you're going to behind, so you'll be taking a right out of the lot going south. That road is called Horse Guards Road. It connects to Great George St./Birdcage Walk. Instead of taking that, you will continue going straight onto Storey's Gate, then take a right going west on Victoria Street. Take that all the way until it turns into Grosvenor Place. Take that until you go right on Duke of Wellington Place. You will meet up with Lizzie and the truck there, and you should be able to slide right in behind, but again, stay inconspicuous.

"Thanks Google Maps," Jack snarked, making Shawn sigh dramatically while Chris snickered in the driver's seat.

"Go suck on your exhaust pipe," he shot back, then made a noise of protest when Ringa scolded him.

"Yeah, no thanks."

"Whatever. Both of you, once you hit the Marble Arch on the left-hand side, get going. You will have about six minutes before you hit the industrial park. It is a stretch of the A5 motorway. When you see Kish on the left-hand side, it's a restaurant apparently, the park is just past that by about ten seconds.

"Now, on the way out, you will need to take different routes home, because the cops will pick up on the fact that the bomb threat was a diversion, and they'll most likely know why. The goal, obviously, is to keep your involvement hidden-"

"Yeah, I was actually planning on strolling into Scotland Yard with a big sign around my neck that said 'Evidence Thief' in huge red letters. Wanna bet on how fast they arrest me?"

Her laughing at Jack's sarcasm seemed to make Shawn extra annoyed.

" _Normally_  you could pick up the A40 motorway just a little south of the park, but they will be sending cops to patrol the first 10 miles or so of any motorways going away from the Buckingham Palace area. So, you will need to take backroads all the way west until you get to McDonald's at the corner of Church Road, the A40, and Western Ave. You can take a left there and get on the A312. You can take that all the way until it links up to the M4, and then that road should take you far enough to where you know how to get home. That should clear you of the cops."

"You  _know_ , you can get annoyed with Jack all you want, but you're the one that gets to sit behind the computer in the safety of  _Jack's_ house," she said. "We're the ones doing all of the hard work."

"Yeah,  _yeah_. Whatever. You guys are going to sit there for an hour or so, right?"

"Yeah," Jack answered. "Just until we get a feel for the area. Traffic, going-ons, etc. Then I will make the call, and you let me know as soon as that truck leaves. Shut the traffic cameras down, and we will go forward from there. And Ringa, you're ready to give us diversions?"

"Si, compadre."

"Sounds good. Shawn, I'll text you just before I make the call."

"Copy that."

The call ended, and she waited for Jack to text her since she couldn't think of anything else he was going to do to pass the time. He could pay attention to what was going on around him, as could she, while they entertained each other.

' _I bought the plane tickets for Lima on the way over here.'_

' _Of course you did. When do we leave?'_

' _Next Friday. Today is Sunday, so that gives us about a week to lounge around the house and make sure that there is no blowback from this job.'_

' _You don't actually think there will be, do you?'_

' _It's a possibility, but we are both good enough at keeping ourselves out of trouble.'_

' _True. But this job involves more than we normally deal with.'_

' _Also true. We should be okay, darling.'_

' _I have been meaning to ask you something.'_

' _Oh yeah?'_

' _Mhm. Why did you choose the hotel in Mumbai to reconnect with me?'_

She didn't get a response right away, and after a few minutes, she looked out of her window to find him staring out of his windshield, apparently contemplating. He could also apparently feel her staring at him because he glanced over and gave her the tiniest eye roll.

' _What? I can't think for a moment?'_

' _Nope, not allowed.'_

' _Haha. And I don't know. Probably just had a moment of intelligence. You were collecting my things, and I had an opportunity to help out, so I did.'_

' _That's all? Just a moment of intelligence?'_

' _Dammit, you're going to make me get all sappy again. ;) Fine. Getting a chance to see you again...with a way that wasn't...that personal was a golden opportunity.'_

' _Why couldn't it be personal?'_

' _Do you really want to talk about this again?'_

' _We're not talking. We're texting.'_

' _...Whatever. Because I didn't know where I stood with you. If I could treat the meeting more professional rather than personal, I could figure that out easier.'_

' _Sounds to me like you just couldn't stand being away from me any longer.'_

' _Having you that close did make me realize how ridiculously long it had been. Too long, much too long. And if I were to tell the truth, I probably would have hunted you down with or without the compass as an excuse. The meeting would have just been much different without it.'_

' _But you had been close to me before. Remember, when you broke into my garage.'_

' _Testing the waters. That's what that was. I had half a mind to try and get into your house, but then I had another moment of intelligence and realized what an awful idea that was. By the way, where did you put the compass?'_

' _It's in my things in your bedroom. Don't worry, I'm not going to lose it. And I almost wish you had broken in.'_

' _What, so you could shoot me?'_

' _Both you and I know that you are too smart to let me do that.'_

' _I dunno, you have the tendency to mess with my ability to do a lot of things. Like think straight.'_

' _Uh huh. If I recall, rum seemed to do that perfectly fine before.'_

' _Very funny. You know, don't think that I didn't forget that we were separated. I certainly didn't. It was at the forefront of my mind every day, along with every reason that I came up with to put off trying to reconnect.'_

' _I thought about it every day too, which is why it's a mystery to me that I didn't figure out it was you before I got in the hotel room.'_

Truthfully, it was probably because subconsciously, she had accepted that he wasn't coming back, and her brain had repressed any reaction she might've had to his signals. All of his pet names for her, teasing her, everything. Just blanked out, unintentionally forgotten in the moment.

' _I enjoyed teasing you. You were awfully rude to me though.'_

' _You deserved it.'_

' _You're just annoyed because I look way too good in a suit.'_

' _You do look good in a suit. You should wear them more often.'_

' _Now now, I was a pirate. I can't just start dressing up every day. Wouldn't feel right.'_

' _Uh huh. Did I ever tell you that I finally got ahold of your jade dragon ring?'_

' _I wondered why I stopped hearing about it pass from person to person.'_

' _Oh come off it, you stopped me from getting it so many times...Just like the damn charts.'_

' _If you want, we can co-own the charts.'_

' _Speaking of, I can't believe that I forgot to tell you this. I managed to get my hands on the Pirate Codex a few years ago. It was actually a job, but I decided to claim it for myself once I figured out what it was.'_

It took him a second to respond, and she figured out why when she found him glaring daggers at her from his car.

' _...So that would be why it suddenly vanished. I had been trying to get my hands on it too.'_

' _I figured. We can co-own it too if it will make you feel better.'_

' _Probably won't ;)'_

' _You're annoying. :)'_

A few minutes went by before he sent something else.

' _Do you have any idea how happy I was (still am) to see you again?'_

Her stomach did a couple of flips, and she was suddenly grinning like an idiot.

' _You certainly hid it well.'_

' _I hid a lot of things well that night. Nervousness, happiness, doubt, you name it. Really all I wanted to do the second I saw you sitting on that barstool sipping the wine was throw you on the floor, or couch, or wherever, and just kiss you senseless.'_

' _I wish you had. Making me wait until the parking garage for anything was just mean. Then you made me wait again until we got to your house. Well, barely, lol.'_

' _I couldn't wait any longer. Like I said before, you're lucky I actually made it inside the house. And when we get to Lima, I'll touch you as much as you want, love. ;)'_

' _That is a dangerous thing to say to me.'_

' _Oh? Why is that?'_

' _We'll never actually get to see Lima.'_

' _Haha, I already told you that I would be fine with that.'_

' _If you say so. I was happy to see you too after I took a second to get over the fact that it was you who left the yellow bead that I had been obsessing over for three weeks.'_

' _Obsessing huh? That reminds me, I have the rest of them if you want them.'_

' _I figured as much.'_

" _I still want you to wear the outfit for me again.'_

' _I didn't forget, haha. And why, exactly?'_

' _I miss it.'_

' _Think I could get you in your uniform again?'_

' _We could probably arrange that somehow.'_

If only she could...it was useless thinking about it because 12 million dollars was an unattainable amount of money, but it would be like rewinding back if they were to undress each other in their old outfits to make love in the  _Pearl_. Just the thought gave her goosebumps.

' _Good. So when do I get to see your house?'_

' _Oh! I had actually sort of forgot that I even had my own house. We can go there after Lima if you would like. I'm sure you'll like it.'_

' _I like everything of yours, darling.'_

' _I know you do.'_

' _Though I have always been partial to your breasts.'_

A bit of a thrill shot through her at that.

' _Oh? Why is that?'_

' _They're literally perfect, and I'm not just saying that because they're yours, even though them being yours does qualify them as being perfect by default. On a purely physical level, they're flawless.'_

She couldn't help herself, but Jack sent another message before she could get a reply in, and it made the widest grin fly across her mouth.

' _Savvy?'_

Looking across the lot through her rolled down window, she saw his eyes sparkling as he watched her laugh, grinning himself.

' _Well, care to elaborate more?'_

' _Oh, now you are just fishing for compliments. Again.'_

' _And you're going to compliment me. Again.'_

' _God, if I have to. They're perfectly round, not too big, not too small, just big enough to fill my hand. Perfectly placed, not too low, not too high, they are so goddamn soft, and your nipples are the perfect shade of pink. Really, every time I see your breasts I feel like Christmas has come early.'_

Her body quivered with excitement, and her heartbeat accelerated just a fraction.

' _Still? It's been almost 300 years.'_

' _And that means that I should be bored with you by now? Lizzie, darling, it could be a thousand years and I still wouldn't be tired of admiring your body.'_

She sucked her lips into her mouth to suppress the grin that was starting to make her cheeks hurt. There was never going to be an end to the reminders of why she loved this man. He sent something else before she could reply.

' _Are you saying you're bored with me? ;)'_

' _No, of course not. I feel like I would be a horrible person if I didn't internally worship your body.'_

' _Haha, why?'_

' _Because, I literally have full-time access to the sexiest man on the planet, and if I don't treat him as such, if I don't appreciate him, that would make me rather undeserving, wouldn't it? I'm sure there are plenty of women that would be more than happy to take you from me.'_

Sneaking a peek at him, she found him with much the same grin that she had been giving him for ten minutes.

' _Wow, the whole planet? Earth is pretty big.'_

' _I have seen a lot of men, a lot. And there isn't one yet that matches or surpasses you. It's the simple truth.'_

' _I'm flattered, love.'_

' _What else do you like about me?'_

Shameless. She was absolutely shameless. Jack didn't seem to mind, though.

' _I could go on for hours, but I will give you a short list. I like when you smile when you are alone and don't know that I am looking at you. I like the way your hair is extra poofy in the morning. I like the squeaking noise you make when you are laughing really hard. I like the way you bite your lip when you are confused about something. I like your moans. I like the way your skin looks in the sun. You kind of glow, and it's rather beautiful. I love your sarcasm, I love your independence, I just love you basically.'_

Her heart was fluttering to almost unbearable levels now. This man. This bloody amazing perfect gorgeous man.

' _I also like the way you look when I tell you that I love you. Since we are on a roll here, mind telling me what you like about me? :)'_

' _I like your hair. It's the perfect shade of brown, and just thick enough for me to bury my hands in. I like your smile because it can mean so many different things. I like the way you sort of push your lips out when you are confused or annoyed. I love your skin, always have. I like how complex you are. I like the way you touch me. I like your sarcasm too. I love how smart you are. I love that I am like an open book to you. I like how you are such a leader, how you can take command of anything basically at the drop of a hat. The king in me loves it, anyway. :) This might sound weird, but I love it when you swear. And I love the way you snuggle.'_

The list was much, much longer than that, really.

' _You like the way I snuggle? Please elaborate.'_

' _You don't just lay there. You touch me, you know, those little touches that only come about between two people that are as in sync with each other as we are.'_

' _Haha, I didn't realize that the way I snuggle wasn't normal. :)'_

' _Nothing about you is normal. Do you suppose I would settle for any average guy?'_

' _No, I suppose not. Ms. High Standards.'_

' _Well, you certainly leave those standards in the dust and then some.'_

' _What say you to leaving this parking lot in the dust?'_

' _Is it time to make the call?'_

' _It's time to make the call. See you at home?'_

' _See you at home. I love you.'_

' _Love you too, darling.'_


	15. Perfect Chaos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo, chapter 15! Hope everyone enjoys this one as much as I enjoyed writing it. :)

September 13th, Sunday Afternoon, 12 PM

* * *

She dropped herself down into her chair, already hating where she was, what she was about to eat, a blueberry muffin that had lost part of itself in her car on the ride over, and what she had to look forward to.

A long day of nothing.  _Nothing_  except the run of the mill robbery calls, car accidents, missing persons, and miscellaneous garbage that was going to bombard her from every corner of this damn building. Copy machines in the distance, the whir of telephones ringing, the arguing about who was going to go out for lunch break first.

It was only noon. She had five hours left.

It wasn't that she  _hated_  her job, but sometimes, the work just wasn't quite what she had expected it to be. Not that she had  _expected_  it to be like in the TV shows where she solved a high-profile murder case every week, but it wouldn't bother her if it was just a little less  _tedious_.

"Chief Inspector?"

Leaning against the door was a man that she had always compared to a wet mouse. His skin had a strange sheen to it like he was always sweating, and his hair was brown and stringy, like a Barbie Doll that has been trapped under a bed for ten years.

" _Yes_ , Rilkes?"

His eyes jumped from the muffin that was now halfway in her mouth, to the stack of papers that he held in his hand. It often mystified her how it was that the man had come to obtain the title of sergeant.

"I have the paperwork that...the stuff that Chamberlain sent over," he paused to extend his arm out further for her to grab it. "He said it's urgent or something."

"Generally things that the superintendent sends someone are to be considered urgent."

The strange stringy little bangs that hung over his forehead twitched when he jerked his head in what she supposed was a nod.

Scanning the papers, she rapidly transitioned from interested to bored. They were just closing documents on the first murder case that she had done a month ago. Evidence organization, final sentences, prisoner orientation, things like that. There should be a different person to handle the boring paperwork, she thought. Maybe a  _secretary_.

"Was that all, Rilkes?"

"Oh, uh, yes mum."

"Then  _why_ are you still standing there?"

Somehow, he seemed to be sweating more than he already did normally.

"I was told to wait until you had a response of some kind."

Goddamn Chamberlain. It almost seemed like he enjoyed aggravating her to the point where she contemplated handing over her badge and gun in a whirlwind of punches and curse words.

A crick in her neck made itself known when she looked up slowly from the papers to regard him with a dangerous glare.

"Is that so?"

"Yes, mum."

Rolling her eyes, she set about looking back through the papers thoroughly, yet quickly, much how a college student crams an entire textbook twenty minutes before the final exam.

When the phone on her desk rang, she let it go for two, then jerked her head in Rilkes' direction.

"Wanna get that?"

He shuffled forward into the room, picking it up on the last ring.

A few seconds went by before she realized he was wiggling it at her.

" _What?_ "

"They um, they want to speak to whoever is in charge at the moment."

"And Chamberlain decided to fire himself and disappear into the wilds of London, did he?"

"He's on lunch break."

"Oh, for fuck's sake, give it to me."

She snatched the phone from his hand and slapped the papers down onto her desk, halfway grateful for the interruption.

" _Hello_?"

A deep male voice, one that she would think a combination of velvet and chocolate might sound like, answered on the other end. It had an authority to it, a kind of demanding presence, as though if she didn't listen, there would be consequences.

"May I ask who I'm speaking to?"

"...This is Chief Inspector Trivoly. How may I assist you?"

She really tried to make her voice friendly, instead of it containing undertones of "fuck off", but she wasn't entirely sure that she succeeded.

"Busy day, Ms. Trivoly?"

"I'm sorry?"

"How many people would you say are in the building at the moment?"

"...why do you ask?"

"...How many people would you say are currently in the Department of Health next door?"

"Who is this?"

"Answer the questions, please."

"Well, they are both government buildings, lots of employees, so you tell me."

"Fairly populated then,  _I_  would say."

" _Who_  in the  _fuck_  is this?"

"Such language. Would you say that the police force is well trained?"

"I'm going to hang up if you don't give me a damn name."

The voice chuckled, a rather sinister noise combined with the poor sound quality of the call.

"I wouldn't if I were you."

She thought about that for a second. Something about the entire conversation up until that point was putting her on edge like there was something that she wasn't seeing.

"... _Yes_ , I would say that everyone is well trained."

"Well, sometimes I beg to differ. The response time is getting a little slow.  _But_ , I'm sure you are well prepared for what's going to happen next, in any case."

What in the  _fuck..._

"What are you talking about?"

"You sound like you dislike your job."

"And you sound like you're stalling."

"A bit too tedious for you? All of those boring cases, annoying people milling about. Perhaps get out and live a little after this."

"After  _what_?"

"What made you want to be a cop?"

"Sorry, I don't tell personal details to strangers on phones."

"Fine. I'm guessing that you found most other choices to be too...selfish. You wanted to be a  _hero_ , and interior decorators don't get to wear superhero capes to often, do they?"

" _How did you know_ -"

"Nevermind that, nevermind that. I did call for something important, something  _very_ important, so let's hope you are as competent as I think you are. Time to become Supergirl, for a little while anyway."

"What in the  _fuck_ -"

He cut her off again, his voice transforming from the light taunting tone that he had been using before to something deadly serious, something that forced her to listen to every word.

"In the building is a drum of ammonium nitrate mixed with diesel oil, setup to remotely detonate. The same thing is in the Department of Health. Now, I'm sure you know all about bombs, so I probably don't need to tell you exactly what these will do, but I will anyway. When these go off, they are going to level the first two floors of each building, and unless you skipped physics class, when nothing supports the top floor, well, have you ever played Jenga?"

"Is this some kind of  _fucking j-_ "

"No, no, Inspector Trivoly, this isn't some kind of joke. I thought you wanted something exciting? Consider this a golden opportunity. The bombs will go off in...one hour. Should get things moving and all that. Best of luck to you. Perhaps you can thank me for giving you something to do should we ever meet. Cheers."

The phone clicked, a sound that seemed much louder considering the circumstances. Her hands were shaking, and she dropped the phone into the receiver to clutch at them.

 _Fuck fuck fuck_. This was not  _fucking_ what she... _Jesus Christ_.  _Fuck this job_. But the excitement that was indeed jumping in her blood told a different story.

... _fuck._

"Mum?"

Her head snapped up when the squeaky little voice of Rilkes nearly made her fly into a rage with her already frazzled nerves, which snapped taut as soon as her training kicked in, barely.

"Get Chamberlain on the phone."

"He's on lunc-"

"I don't fucking care if he's balls deep in the fucking  _Queen. Get him on the phone._ "

She smashed the overhead button on the receiver while pushing the building's threat alert button at the same time, ignoring the sweat forming on her own forehead while Rilkes frantically dialed the superintendent's number.

" _All personnel are to evacuate the building immediately. We have a critical threat situation. Evacuate the building immediately."_

The combination of chairs being pushed back, questions being shouted, phones being hung up, doors being opened and closed, the alarm, and feet running across the linoleum floor made her anxiety level shoot through the roof.

A cellphone appeared in her box of vision, and she snatched it out of Rilkes hand.

"Monica, what-"

" _We have a fucking bomb threat Cyril, fuck...this building and the DoH. Called in two minutes ago. You need to g-"_

" _I'll be there in three. Get everyone outside right now."_

" _Already done."_

But the line went dead before he heard her.

"Rilkes, get SO13 on the phone. Tell them we have two ammonium bombs set to go off in hour's time," she shouted over her shoulder, racing out of the room with the sergeant on her heels. "And call the director at the DoH. Tell him to get everyone out.  _Everyone_."

She ran across the lobby, thanking Christ that she wasn't wearing heels, shouting 'Sergeant Unwin' until she nearly ran into the man.

"I need you to grab the evidence boxes of the five high-profile cases and get them into an armored truck. Leave the rest. Take Slaymaker with you and transport them to Hampstead. You have  _five minutes._ Do  _not_ fail."

There was a second where she thought he didn't understand, but then he nodded, his eyes wide, and nearly fell over in his haste to carry the orders out.

Joining the horde of people exiting the building after she grabbed the megaphone from behind the front desk, she smashed the call button and whispered 'come on' under her breath until Cyril answered.

" _Monica_ , I'm heading to the parking courtyard in the HMRC building. Direct everyone there. I sent a critical alert to all constables in the area. They're shutting the block down. Did you call SO13?"

" _Of course I fucking-"_

"Ok,  _ok_ , just making sure. See you there."

He hung up just as she shouted the directions to the crowd through the megaphone, letting them distribute the message amongst themselves.

The run to the HMRC building flowed into a blur of adrenaline, bodies pushing against each other, screaming, crying, and a hundred other things that her brain was too stressed to identify.

* * *

" _Monica. MONICA!"_

She spun around to find Cyril rushing towards her, fear poorly hidden on his face.

"Oh thank god," he blurted out, nearly toppling over with the extra force his body still had when he stopped just in front of her.

"Inspector Trivoly?"

Her heart jumped again when she turned to find a man with black body armor on.

"Superintendent Chamberlain", he added, nodding at Cyril, earning a half-nod in return.

" _Yes_ , I'm Inspector Trivoly."

It was difficult to be heard over the buzz of the crowd, but they managed.

"I'm the bomb disposal lead, Mark Ishter. I have a team here ready to go for each building. Can you tell me as quickly as possible all of the information the caller gave you?"

Cyril craned his neck to listen too, nervously shifting his weight back and forth, but otherwise staying calm enough.

"All he said was that there were two drums of ammonium nitrate mixed with diesel oil ready to remote detonate. He didn't say where in the buildings they were, only that we had an hour to find them."

"Ok, ok. I have alerted the surrounding fire departments and any available constables not being used for shutting the block down. I will send my teams in immediately."

He rushed away before she got a chance to answer, shouting something through a walkie-talkie.

"Monica. Did you get the evidence-"

"Yes, they are taking it to Hampstead. Should be leaving right about now."

"And-"

"Yes, everyone is out of both buildings."

"Good. There is a fourty percent chance this is a hoax, but with the fucked way the world is right now, I'm not very optimistic."

"But  _how_ would they get bombs-"

"Not important right now. We will monitor everything as close as possible until something happens, or the threat clears. You did your job, now you just need to carry it through."

She nodded, feeling somewhat reassured.

"Right."

* * *

The waiting was starting to make her restless as she drummed her fingers on the steering wheel of the Viper, until just then the walkie-talkie beeped, Jack's voice coming through.

"Made the call. Told Shawn. He is shutting down the cameras now. Truck's left. Let's go."

"Showtime, finally. _"_

Her heart started to pound in excitement. It had already been too long since she had done  _something_ , and now she was going to be robbing an armored truck.  _Excellent_.

She heard the engine of the McLaren fire up as soon as she turned her own key over. Jack and Chris went first, taking a right, while she took a left.

"See you at the truck, darling."

"Copy that," she said with a smile in her voice.

The alarm in the police department could be heard even from where she was, and it was a sound that sent adrenaline into her as she navigated the streets, keeping an eye on her speed.

* * *

Rows of cement columns and parking spaces sat idly as the normally quiet space of the police parking garage below the building exploded with curse words, boots pounding on the cement floor and the buzz and static of walkie-talkies.

"Do you see anything?"

"No, there's nothing fucking down here. Not a drop of fucking oil, no drum, fucking nothing."

"Christ, alright, call it into the team head and let's head to the next floor."

"Copy that."

* * *

The stark medical hallways of the building were illuminated by flashlights.

"There isn't shit down here," came a voice as a man in a bomb disposal suit smashed through the set of double doors in the central room of the basement of the Department of Health.

"Yeah, the other team lead at the other end of the building just said the same thing. Call it in and we'll sweep the next floor."

"Are you sure we are going to be able to clear this whole fucking place in an hour? The damn building is huge."

"Well, I can tell you for sure that standing here bitching isn't going to do anyone any good."

"Right, let's go."

* * *

Her phone started ringing in her pocket, making Cyril jump.

"Hello?"

"Inspector Trivoly, it's Mark Ishter. Just cleared both basements, and we're moving to the next floor."

"Ok, thank you."

"Nothing in the basements," she said, not necessarily to Cyril, but to herself, and anyone who might have been listening. She was too jazzed up to focus on any specific thing or person right now.

"They still have three floors in the DoH to go, and two in our building."

"Oh, thanks for being optimistic Cyril. Way to go."

* * *

The Viper's engine purred while the car vibrated under her and around her as she slid in front of the truck on Park Lane, staying about twenty feet ahead. She heard the McLaren only a few seconds later.

Her blood was pumping, and her body quivered with success as they rode the truck down the street. Now all they had to do was make it to the Arch.

"Almost there," came Jack's voice over the walkie-talkie, and she could hear the thrill in him too.

"Don't miss."

"Darling, I  _never_  miss."

* * *

" _Fuck_. They didn't find anything on the second floors either. I don't know how in the fuck anyone could have gotten a drum of oil on the top floor of our building."

' _Have you ever played Jenga?'_

Even the faintest reminder of the bastard on the phone made her blood boil, and she couldn't even pin down the reason why.

"We aren't in the clear yet, Monica. The DoH is huge, and they still have two floors to go there."

"No  _shit_."

Suddenly Cyril's phone rang.

"Charles," he answered, putting it on speaker. "I have Inspector Trivoly here too. Why are you calling? Your dispatch office should be focusing on making sure the area is covered. We have the other office to deal with any civilian calls."

"We had a high threat level call made through to us. A big fire on the other end of town. I wanted the go ahead to send fire personnel."

"Big threat level calls? What, is Buckingham fucking Palace on fire?"

"No, some big office building or something."

" _Jesus Christ_ ," he said, dragging the syllables out in a sort of frustrated panic. " _Fuck me_ , fine. Send them."

As soon as he hung up, she was in his face.

"Cyril, something is fucked up here. They haven't found anything, and now suddenly something is on fire?"

"I don't know what's going on anymore than you do. As soon as they clear the DoH, we'll jump on it."

She drug her hand through her hair, feeling a little dizzy.

"...Fine,  _fine."_

* * *

One hundred feet, fifty feet, thirty-five feet, twenty feet, ten feet…

The Marble Arch passed them in a blur of white and she put pressure on the brake pedal, aligning herself with the truck, which instinctively sped up, the whir of the diesel engine loud compared to their cars. She matched their speed, keeping them boxed in, when suddenly the sirens of a fire truck pierced the air, causing the truck to swerve, and only her fast reflexes kept the Viper in line with it.

That would be Ringa's distractions.

Six precious minutes was all they had, and the clock was now ticking as they sped down the motorway.

Come on, Jack. Come on.

She heard the sound of a shotgun blast just as a second fire truck flew through close by, barely muffled by the closed window, and could have cheered if she wasn't so focused. As soon as she heard the second shot, she reached inside the center console and found the pistol that she had located before they had left the garage. Leaning out of the now open window, she was just able to aim at a good enough angle to hit the camera that was attached to the top right corner of the truck.

It shattered when the bullet struck it, sending the pieces onto the road, and she caught a glimpse of the truck's passengers getting pissed just before she pulled the gun back in the car, throwing it in the other seat.

A third shotgun blast rang through the air, followed a few seconds later by a fourth, and then she heard a car door open, and it occurred to her that Jack had to get out of the McLaren to get into the truck.

 _Christ Jack,_  be careful.

"If you turn him into roadkill Chris, I swear to god…"

* * *

The wind pushed his hair away from his face as he carefully,  _very carefully_ , climbed up onto the hood of the McLaren, the back doors of the truck now wide open. He paused to listen for the Viper ahead, making sure that Lizzie was okay as much as he could since he couldn't see the car.

"I swear to god Chris, you even so much as twitch this car right now, and I will come back to fucking haunt the shit out of you if Lizzie doesn't kill you first," he shouted.

"Funny, your girl just said the same thing. And if what they say about ghosts is true, you're stuck in the state you die in, and I don't think roadkill is going to be haunting anyone."

"Go fuck yourself."

Inching his way across the hood, vaguely hearing Chris cackling, he finally got close enough to hop into the truck, and was vaguely reminded of standing on a ship railing.

* * *

The two sports cars were still boxing them in, matching every swerve.

" _Holy christ what in the fuck is going on?"_ was shouted over Slaymaker's cursing.

" _I don't fucking know Unwin. Does it look like I fucking know?"_

Sergeant Unwin's hands shook as he gripped the steering wheel of the truck with white knuckles.

" _We can't fuck this up, Slaymaker, you wanker. Do you have any idea how much shit we will be in if we fuck this up? Not only with Trivoly, but with the fucking Japs...holy shit…"_

" _We gotta fucking lose them!"_

" _I fucking would if I could. Whoever the fuck these people are, they are fucking-"_

* * *

"Thank  _fuck_ ," he whispered under his breath as soon as he was sure that his balance was good, withdrawing the tranquilizer pistol from the back of his trousers just as the only guard in the truck jumped at him, a flying mass of body armor. The man didn't get very far before he had a dart buried in his neck, flopping onto the floor like a pile of full black garbage bags.

"Who the  _fuck_ are you?" a voice squeaked.

He glanced up to see the passenger staring at him with bulging eyes, filled with such panic that he had to swallow down laughter at the sight, before raising the gun and planting a second dart into the man's neck, then crossing the truck in two steps.

" _My turn to drive_."

A third dart left the gun just as the driver jerked away in defense. His body slumped over as the drug took effect. It took him a little longer than he would have liked, but he managed to get the pudgy officer onto the floor of the truck while guiding the wheel at the same time, whispering another "thank fuck" under his breath for remembering to wear gloves. He let him land in a heap before sliding into the driver's seat just as the industrial park came into view.

"Told you I never miss," he said over the walkie-talkie. "Driver was kind of heavy though."

* * *

A relieved laugh tumbled out of her mouth when Jack's voice came through the speaker, and she glanced up to see him sitting in the driver's seat through her rearview mirror.

"Nicely done."

"Seconded," Chris said right after.

They drove into the park just as the six minutes expired, stopping behind a row of garages, out of sight. Her heart pounded, and the sounds of the engines still rang in her ears as everything went quiet.

Chris climbed out of the McLaren just as Jack's feet hit the ground.

She watched him adjust his clothing, then turn around to grab the keys out of the ignition. Feeling wicked, she snuck up behind him as quietly as she could.

" _Boo_."

He  _twitched_ , barely, but it still brought her satisfaction.

"Trying to scare me, darling?"

He turned around to smirk at her, pulling her in for a quick kiss.

" _Maybe_ ," she whispered, breaking away.

His eyes were gleaming with left-over adrenaline and his hair was wind-mussed. She couldn't help but feel a rush of affection for him, though it might have been her own excitement at pulling off this ridiculous plan.

"...could you two maybe keep your hands off each other long enough for us to find the box and get the fuck out of here?"

They both shared a look and snickered at Chris, who was standing there glaring at them, and then followed him into the back of the truck. Five boxes were piled into the left corner, and they had to maneuver around the body to get at them.

" _See_ , seems like he has one too many doughnuts every morning," Jack said, pointing at the driver.

"Yeah, compared to you. You should probably consider eating a doughnut every now and then," Chris retorted, rolling his eyes.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

She raised a hand to perhaps make their attention turn towards her, but then she teetered between whether or not this was turning into an actual argument, or them just antagonizing each other. Turning away to start reading the labels, she half-listened to them, glancing at Jack when he knelt down to help her, catching an expression of amusement on his face.

"Not saying you're skinny, but…"

"Sure, I might not be built like the fucking  _Hulk_ , but if you're insinuating that I'm weak…"

"I mean, I think I could take you pretty easily."

Jack stopped examining to look round at Chris, an incredulous eyebrow raised.

"...are you actually saying that you'd win if we were to fight?"

If she didn't know better, she would have thought it was just Jack's ego talking, but she also knew that he had been in his fair share of physical fights before he had been named Captain of the Wicked Wench, and a fair few after that even. Fights where his clever words just hadn't ended up doing any good, and swords and pistols were forgotten about.

" _Jack_ , I have a few inches on you, and a few pounds-"

"I don't fucking care what you have-"

"Fine. Arm wrestle me when we get back."

The rest of Jack's breath that had collected in his mouth from his flustered retort was released in a whoosh as he stared at Chris with a look that was a cross between wanting to shout more and wanting to laugh.

"...what are you, five?"

"No, I just want to be proven right."

Finally arriving at the right box, since she had actually been looking, she also found herself completely fed up with their bickering.

" _Excuse me_? The two of you actually want to come out of this without jail time, right?"

* * *

" _What the fuck did you just tell me?"_

Cyril placed a hand on her shoulder to stop her from launching her phone across the parking lot because that was what she was contemplating at that very moment.

" _Monica-"_

"We searched the entire building, both of them, and nothing. We didn't find anything. The bombs weren't real," Ishter responded. "Both of my teams scoured. There was nothing there."

" _Fuck...ok_ , I want both of your teams to go to meet in the briefing room at the department. Wait for me there."

"Copy that."

When she smashed the call end button on her phone, Cyril was already spinning her around, wild-eyed.

"The entire fucking thing was a diversion?" he hissed, his jaw tight.

" _Yeah_ , apparently," she snapped back. "But what was it a diversion f-"

Her eyes went wide, and the breath that she was about to exhale got trapped in her throat, staying there until it started to burn.

"Oh  _fuck me_ , oh no no  _no-_ "

"Care to tell me what-"

"The  _fucking_ evidence, Cyril! Jesus Christ, this whole fucking thing was to get that evidence out of the building, and while we were running around with our heads up our arses…And I bet the fucking "fires" were diversions too..."

"Are you saying-"

"Yeah, I'm saying that whoever was on the fucking phone with me earlier to call in the bomb threat, they are now either en route to steal one of those boxes, or they already have it."

He rubbed his hands over his face, his sixty years showing in a rare moment of uninhibited frustration.

"Who did you give the order to?"

"Unwin and Slaymaker."

"Radio them right now. I'll send the order out for all available constables in the area to start patrolling the motorways."

She was already in the process of grabbing her walkie-talkie as he said the words.

* * *

Just then, a frantic voice coming from one of the bodies made Jack's head snap around to listen to it, his attention pinpoint focused immediately.

" _Unwin. Unwin! Slaymaker, pick up, for fuck's sake. Where are you?"_

All three of them stared at the little walkie-talkie on the man's belt, and Jack reacted first.

" _Fuck_ , they've figured it out. That's the woman I talked to on the phone. Triv-Triv-I don't fucking remember, something with a T, I think. Inspector. Lizzie, grab the box and let's get the fuck out of here."

She spun around to wrap her hands around the thick cardboard as Jack plucked all of the tranq darts out that he had used, and then followed him out of the truck, dropping to the cement into his steadying hand, before heading back to the Viper. She delicately placed the box in the back seat before climbing into the driver's seat, pausing for a second to listen to Jack when he started talking over the walkie-talkie.

"Remember, back roads all the way until the M4. We have a long drive ahead of us. I'll drive behind you."

"Sounds good, see you at home."

Dust clouded the air from the gravelly ground in the park as they pulled out.

* * *

As soon as Jack's house came into view she breathed another sigh of relief. It felt good to roll down the driveway into the garage, but it felt a little less satisfying to put the car in park and turn the engine off.

Miraculously, they had managed to make it back without a hitch, thanks to Shawn's idea to use backroads for awhile.

Leaning her head back against the seat, her body followed suit as she relaxed, her muscles finally stopping their twitching from all of the adrenaline.

A tapping on the window  _almost_ made her jump, but she managed to reign it in. Opening the car door, she rolled her eyes at Jack.

"What, are you trying to scare me too?"

He chuckled, tugging her up from the seat. "No, but points to me if I did anyways."

" _Nope,_  attempt unsuccessful."

" _Damn._ "

He leaned in to give her another quick kiss, only leaving her wanting  _more_ , the thrill of the day still quivering in her mind, despite feeling relaxed.

"I'm going to put this box," he started, winding his body around her to push the seat back, delicately picking the box up, "in the gun vault. Should be safe in there in case anyone wants to come looking for it."

"Ok, I'll meet you in the living room with everyone else."

Another kiss, and then she headed off to the stairs.

* * *

The aroma of pizza assaulted her as soon as she made it to the top.

"...really?" she said to both Shawn and Ringa who were standing at the kitchen island, dividing up two large loaded pizzas, one chicken alfredo and one something that she couldn't quite identify.

"It was her, I swear," Shawn said as Ringa tried to hold in her laughter.

"I figured you guys might want something to eat when you got back, so I placed the order right after I called in that office building fire. Obviously scheduled delivery for later. Cold pizza is  _asqueroso_."

"At least  _someone_ agrees with me."

Jack's arms circled around her from behind just as he said that. "Mmm, that chicken alfredo is all mine."

"Are you telling me that you could eat that entire pizza all by yourself?"

"I mean...probably."

She rolled her eyes at him, stroking his arms with her thumbs as he planted barely-there kisses on her neck.

"So, going to take Chris up on his challenge?"

He snorted against her neck. "Gonna have to. The idiot won't shut up about it if I don't. But for now, I'm hungry."

* * *

Once they all had a pile of pizza on their plates, they gathered in the living room, just as the sun started to dip below the horizon.

"What a fucking day," Chris said to no one in particular.

"You're telling me. Never thought I would be adding terrorist to my list of criminal offenses," Jack replied, leaning back against the leather couch.

Ringa grabbed the TV remote, switching the TV on.

"I took the liberty of recording the news segment about you guys. Figured you might get a kick out of it."

A blonde woman was standing outside what appeared to be the police department, her trained reporter's face plastered on, the scrolling 'breaking news' banner on the bottom of the screen.

" _Thank you Karen. I am standing in front of the New Scotland Yard, where a critical threat has just been lifted. We have now been told that two explosives were called in, one in this building, and one in the Department of Health next door. They have both been searched and nothing was found. It is unclear at this time who is responsible for the threat, but we were assured that the police are doing everything they can to find a suspect. As you can see, people are returning to the buildings, as the threat has been lifted at this time. We will bring you more updates as we get them. This is Amanda with BBC News. Back to you, Karen."_

"I also have  _this_ ," Ringa said, fast-forwarding a bit, until she arrived at the paused face of the same woman, standing next to another woman in a handsome suit and short brown hair.

" _Thank you for taking the time to answer some questions Inspector Trivoly."_

" _My pleasure."_

" _Are we labeling this as terrorism, or has there been any discussion around that?"_

" _We don't know...what to call it yet, but we will be looking into possible motives as soon as we are able."_

" _You were the one that got the call, is that correct?"_

" _Yes, a male suspect made the call to the department around noon."_

" _Is he being looking into?"_

" _Every possible lead is being looked into."_

" _Has the threat level stayed the same?"_

" _Currently the terrorism threat is still at severe due to recent events, but the immediate threat is gone."_

" _Thank you, Inspector Trivoly. In case you are just tuning in the critical threat has been officially dropped, and there is no current danger that police are aware of. We were told that they would release updates as soon as they have them, and we will be monitoring the situation closely. This has been Amanda Holden with BBC News. Catch us at 10 for more information."_

The second Ringa paused the broadcast, Jack poked her arm.

"I'm being  _looked into_ ," he drawled, a self-important look on his face, chuckling at the eye roll she gave him. "She's the one I talked to on the phone. I'm pretty sure she hates me."

"Yeah, well, you had better hope she doesn't get far. How did the call go anyway?"

"Fine, I thought. Put on my best villain voice and my best Sherlock Holmes interrogation technique, asking vague questions that got me several answers. Acquired as much information as I could, how she was going to react, how long it would take for both buildings to empty, how long they would need to search them, how long we had until they figured it out."

"Your...villain voice?"

"Yeah, kind of like my Captain voice, but imagine that mixed with a little bit of Barbossa, or for those of us here that never heard  _that_ voice, imagine my voice with that chilly drawl of like...Hannibal Lecter."

"Actually, that's pretty accurate," Chris said. "Your voice wasn't too recognizable either, I don't think anyone would match your normal one to it right away. And I think you enjoyed that call a little too much."

"Hey, I don't get to play the villain very often. Breaking out the Joker in me is fun."

"I've been telling you to dress up as Ledger's Joker for Halloween ever since the damn movie came out," Shawn said around a mouthful of pizza. "You would cosplay that character so perfectly."

"I'm  _not_ wearing a green wig."

"Show Lizzie the voice, at least. Come  _on_ , you do it so well."

When Chris finally joined in the coaxing Jack conceded after an excessive amount of eye rolling. He cleared his throat, and was quiet for a moment before he looked at her, and it wasn't just the voice that slithered out of his mouth. His face was suddenly devoid of any traces of humanity, when it had just been there, sparkling, a moment before. It made her shiver involuntarily how quickly he was able to slip into that character.

" _Wanna know how I got these scars_?"

It was the variation that the Joker said to Gamble just before he told the story of his drunk father.

"... _damn_ ," Shawn breathed. "See? It's like Heath Ledger is literally sitting in the room with us."

The life in Jack's eyes returned on command, as though it had never left.

"That was pretty close," she murmured, staring at him with something that bordered on fascination as Jack dug his phone out of his pocket.

"So I've been told," Jack replied, his attention focused on the screen that displayed a 'Now calling' message.

" _Jack_."

"Hello, Suzuki."

"Am I on speaker again?"

"As usual."

"...I'm assuming you got it? I certainly fucking hope so anyway, with the mess you made."

" _Mess_?"

"How do you plan to keep your head clear of all of this shit now?"

"Suzuki, we'll be fine. No one saw us that will remember us, and it can't be traced back to us. How else did you think we were getting that box out of there?"

"...I guess. I just hope this doesn't turn sour."

"You hired me for a reason. Hop on a plane so you can come and get this thing. It makes me feel on edge just having it in my house."

"Already booked an early morning flight out to London. See you tomorrow night."

The line went dead, and Jack tossed the phone onto the coffee table.

"So,  _Chris_ , how about that arm wrestle you're so damned excited for?"

Chris looked up from reaching for another piece of pizza, a smug look on his face, just as Jack added "fucking five year old" under his breath.

" _Now?_ "

"No, tomorrow. Yeah,  _now_."

* * *

They both headed over to the kitchen island, while the rest of them gathered around like they were about to watch a boxing match. Chris settled his right arm into position first, flexing his fingers, taunting Jack, who just rolled his eyes again, following suit, wrapping his hand tightly around Chris's.

"You sure about this?" Chris said, obviously trying to break Jack's confidence, holding perfect eye contact with him, a challenge hanging in the air. Jack's eyes narrowed, an eyebrow raised, looking like the consummate predator, while Chris had the cocky attitude of assuming that he had already won.

"You sound like you're the one who's having second thoughts."

"Nope, just would rather not injure my employer."

A laugh escaped her at the same time as Jack snorted. She had the distinct impression that Chris was about to be put in his place. Sharing a look with Ringa and Shawn, she crossed her arms over her chest, just as Chris glanced over at her for a second.

"Say when, Lizzie," he said, both him and Jack leaning forwards into full position. She took a moment to appreciate the way Jack's black t-shirt clung to the muscle in his arm, before drawing out the tension and suspense until even she couldn't take it any longer.

Was this really  _actually_  happening? Two grown men arm wrestling each other as though they were little kids that had a disagreement on the playground, just after they had successfully stolen a box of evidence from an armored truck for a damn drug cartel?

Her life was strange.

She counted down from 3.

"3...2...1... _start!_ "

It became immediately apparent that Chris had been too cocky, too sure of himself, because his expression changed from smug to frustrated within a second as Jack held fast,  _his_ face holding the perfect physical translation of ' _bitch you thought_ '.

They stayed in the same position, neither giving even an inch for a solid minute, until Chris ground out a " _fuck_ " when Jack started to gain ground, throwing more strength into Chris's arm. They all watched with bated breath, making noises of hype, involuntarily moving forward until they were all huddled around the island glued to the battle in front of them.

Slowly, Chris's arm started to give, started to fold down, inch by inch.

"...Fuck... _fuck, I'm not fucking_ losing  _this…_ "

Jack withstood the last burst of strength, then went for the money, throwing a taunting "get fucked", at him just as Chris gave up, like a fishing line breaking, his arm getting slammed into the island.

"God  _damnit_!"

She allowed herself to feel a little bit of pride, as though she had been the one to win, rather than Jack. He glanced over and gave her a little wink, sending a grin across her mouth.

"Now that you lost, I'm going to explain  _why._ "

He paused, his eyes glittering with victory. "Time for a history lesson, since you evidently  _forgot_. I used to be on a ship, in the ocean, working on said ship...oh, I'd say about eighty-five percent of the year. When Lizzie and I drank from the fountain, it froze both of us...well, it shaved several years off of me, but she stayed the exact same. I'm stuck with the same body that I had then. Here is where the history part comes in.

"A sailor works on a ship from the time he gets up to the time his head hits the pillow. All physical work. Nonstop.  _So_ ,  _physically_ , they were some of the strongest men around, even if they didn't look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and they would be able to out-strength almost anyone if challenged.

"Basically, what I'm saying is that I'm a lot fucking stronger than I look, not that I look like a twig or anything, and next time you feel like underestimating me,  _don't_."

There was a second where they all thought that Chris was literally going to throw a tantrum. Then, he straightened to his full height and seemed to grudgingly accept that he had lost.

"Point taken."

* * *

The warm water introduced her skin to a whole new level of relaxation as she stepped into it. Goosebumps covered her as it soaked her hair, running down her body like a magical waterfall.

Doing a job, any job really, always seemed different before and after. During, in the moment, it seemed commonplace to do whatever it was that you are doing, as though you are just taking a walk in the park, but as soon as you're done, the enormity of it, the pounding heart, the speed, the gunfire, the  _criminality_  of it all hits you like a train.

She always felt a bit giddy after they successfully pulled something off, and this job was no exception.

Suddenly someone nudged her forward and  _stole_  her water.

" _Excuse you_?"

Spinning around, she found Jack grinning at her, not quite a full grin, more of a rather tired half-grin.

"You could at least  _ask_ ," she grouched, watching the water as it fell down his body, following one particular drop as it made its way down his shoulder, right over his nipple, carving a path down his flat stomach, before landing right on…

"It's  _my_  shower."

Her head snapped back up, and she found that she didn't have a counter-argument for that.

"Doesn't mean you can't share."

"Who says I wasn't going to?"

The faux-irritation melted away as he held his arms out, drawing her against his body like an inhale of air, her hands smoothing over his back, her head finding a comfortable spot on his chest. She loved hugging him, loved just being in his arms. Back when they had first gotten closer, during their days as Pirate Kings, she had been pleasantly surprised by how affectionate he was. It hadn't been nearly as full blown as it was now, because he had held some of it back in fear that it wasn't going to be as fully returned, she figured.

But he would play with her neck when he leaned over her at her desk to look at something she was showing him, he would sneak up behind her while she was taking her uniform off to assist her, the word assist  _here_  meaning that he would completely take over, and he undressed her  _much more_  pleasantly than she did herself.

And when they  _swam_ together.  _Oh._  A teasing tickle at her hip while he lounged in the water always turned into a splash fight with him, ending in him stealing her very soul with kisses as a final checkmate.

Even just his eyes when they looked at her, from across the room, across a ship, from two feet away, or when his body was covering hers, they always held a special side of him, a special piece reserved just for her. A warmth, a vulnerability that no one else got to see.

"You...distracted me today, you know," floated out of his mouth from above her head.

"What?"

"Worrying about you...think I almost fell off the hood of the damn car while listening to make sure you were still up there."

"And I nearly had a panic attack when it occurred to me that you had to get on top of a car going 60 miles an hour to jump into a truck. So I worried about you too."

He chuckled into her hair. "Can't teleport love, sorry."

She pinched the skin of his back, earning her a quiet " _ow"_ just before he gently steered her against the wall, covering her mouth with his, then breaking away to pepper kisses across her cheek, over her jawline, dipping down to trail them down her neck, his hands playing below, across her back, her hips, and anywhere else he could reach.

"It  _was_ fun though," she murmured, eyes closed in contentment.

He only gave her a low noise of agreement, but otherwise stayed quiet as he held her close. Finally, she allowed the last remaining bit of tension to leave her body, floating out on the long sigh that slipped through her parted lips, turning into an " _oh_ " when Jack started to massage her shoulders, working his way lower across her back in strong circles of his fingers.

Oh god, this was  _heaven_. He didn't do this very often because they were usually too interested in crossing the physical line into a decidedly more carnal territory, but when he did,  _damn_  he was good at it.

"I'm surprised you still have any strength left," she teased between appreciative moans. He snorted, shaking his head. "Plenty of ego though," she added, opening her eyes to see the raised eyebrow and the little smirk that quirked up the corner of his mouth.

"Self-confidence, love,  _self-confidence_."

"E-g-o," she said in drawn out syllables, earning her a dramatic eye roll, then suddenly she was being lifted off of the ground, her legs instinctively wrapping around his waist. Her back left the shower wall as he turned them around and carried her out, smiling at the way she giggled and gasped, pausing to turn the water off.

"See, plenty of strength left," he said into her hair.

The black satin sheets of his bed were soft against her skin as he layed her down.

" _Jack_ , we're wet st-"

Anything further that she was going to say was muffled when his hand covered her mouth as he attacked her neck with more kisses, his other hand striking against the skin of her stomach just below her ribcage.

" _Damnit_ , Jack,  _Jack_ , that...oh my god  _stop...that tickles_ ," but it all came out as a jumbled mess against his palm as he tortured her, not giving when she tugged at his arm.

He  _did_ however give a small yelp when she dove her hand to his side, tickling him back without mercy, digging her fingers into  _just_ that spot that had him faltering, small bursts of laughter making their way out of him until he finally gave in, rolling to the side, then tugging her up until they both landed on pillows.

" _See_ , now we're dry."

Reaching out to lift up a chunk of his hair, she eyed the dripping water that fell off of it.

" _Most of us_ , anyway."

"But...the towels are  _way_ over there, and I'm... _here_...and I really don't feel like getting up."

"Lazy," she whispered at him.

" _No_ , tired."

He scooted closer and climbed around her to switch the light off, before pausing and making a noise of realization.

" _Just_ in case, I meant to show you that button for the vault a while ago, but I guess I forgot."

Shifting so that she was laying on her stomach, with him annoyingly draped across her back, he pointed at the side of the nightstand. There was a little faceplate there with a small black oval in the center.

"Just push that, and the vault will open. There is also a rather loud alarm keyed into it.  _And_ ," he paused to slide the small drawer towards the bottom open, revealing a small pistol, "that's always there if you need to use it."

"Guns everywhere, I remember."

"I have a lot of enemies. And I'm sure you keep your house defenseless, right?"

" _Touche_."

With the light switched off, they both settled against each other, listening to the noises outside.

"Here's to hoping that this job ends here, yeah?" she whispered.

"Mhm," he answered, or it could have been a dream-noise for all she knew because it looked like he was already asleep. She sighed, and snuggled up next to him, fending off mildly panicked thoughts that this job  _wasn't_ going to end here, that they had stepped into a puddle that could turn into a damn bottomless pit with  _just_ the wrong word said between someone, or the wrong coincidence, or some other fucking human error.

Jobs were all fun and good and exciting, but the reality was, every single one of them had the possibility of becoming a life or death situation, especially one with as high of stakes as this one, despite how lightly they had treated it.

It was a blessing that they had as much of a chance of keeping their involvement a secret as they did, but even that wasn't guaranteed, she knew.

Eventually, sleep took over, sending her worrying into hibernation for now, dreams of Lima taking their place.


	16. Settling Dust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 16! Hope everyone enjoys! I love reviews, thoughts, comments, so please take a second to tell me what you think! :)

September 14th, Monday Morning, 7:30 AM

* * *

It was a strange thing, watching something fall apart and being unable to do anything about it. Almost freeing, in a way, until the loss hits, until the tragedy strikes, until you have to start rebuilding everything that you had so painstakingly worked to construct.

He had no shortage of messes that he had to clean up, but this mess, this involved so much more than just a quick erasure job. The moment that Izumi had shot Ishii was a catalyst, something that set off a chain reaction of more magnitude than he was comfortable with.

They simply couldn't allow the police to learn that it was Izumi, and not Ramos, that had killed Ishii, because that would bring so many other things to light, things that were tied to their Russia operation, sinuous threads, all leading back to them. He was prepared to take any measures necessary to shield the Yakuza.

Reliability was something that he had always found flimsy, so it was extra troublesome that it was so often the crutch that everything depended on. The two officers at the department in the UK had been tasked with that box, under orders  _and_ payment to see to it that it remained safe and within their possession.

Then, the worst case scenario happened, something that they had not prepared for, a  _curve ball_  as the Americans liked to call it.

When he had seen the broadcast, the streets clearing around the department, the ' _level 5 security threat'_  banner, the evacuation, he distinctly remembered his hands shaking with both shock and anger, cold dread slithering through his body.

 _Someone_  that they had no prior knowledge of had been...tasked, by the Cartel most likely, to steal the evidence, and it burned him that he hadn't been able to prevent it, that he hadn't been able to choose people that couldn't  _fail_  him.

It was a fairly flimsy case to begin with, pinning the crime on Ramos, but it was the only choice they had at the moment. He would be damned if it fell apart now.

"Sasaki-san."

He continued to glare at the cup of sake in his hand for a few seconds more before he acknowledged Izumi with a slow look.

"We need to go to Britain," Izumi continued. "This situation needs to be stopped in its tracks."

"...I'm aware. Tell Tsubasa, Koji, and Naoki to pack whatever they feel necessary, and also tell them to choose... _someone_  to be their companion. I want you to do more research into Scotland Yard. We leave tomorrow night."

He was a man of strength, a man known for his steadfastness in the face of impossible situations, and he tried to remain confident that  _this_ situation wouldn't get away from him.

"And Izumi?"

The man turned to look at him just before he headed out of the door.

"In case this fails, I want you to think of  _any_ way that we can recover. Any other angle we can pursue."

" _Gōi_ , Sasaki-san."

* * *

The sharpening of the knife in his hands was putting her on edge. None of the usual cartel goons were around, so for a rare moment, she and Arturo were alone in his little dump of a house, sitting at his kitchen table,  _again_. It made her want to go take a shower.

It was 7:30, her flight was at 9, and she had wisely decided to coordinate with him before she left.

"I appreciate you making a side trip to speak with me before your flight."

"I don't imagine you would appreciate it if I didn't."

"Indeed. We have plans to make."

"Plans?"

He tapped the knife against the sharpener several times in an impatient manner.

"We are going to go with you to Britain. Well, not with  _you_ , but we are traveling there as well."

She had half expected that, but it annoyed her that he didn't trust her.

"I see you are still paranoid as ever."

A gurgly chuckle bubbled up from his throat, a smoker's chuckle.

"I just don't trust anyone but me to transport that box back here. We will have a drop-off point for you to bring the box to once you collect it."

"...you're not worried about the mess that Jack made?"

" _Niña tonta_ , I don't care how he got the box, I only care that he succeeded."

Drumming her fingers on the table, she let out a short sigh.

"There is something...that I didn't tell you about, on Jack's end."

The only reaction from him that she could detect was the corner of his bushy eyebrow raising.

" _Well?_ "

Hesitating for only a second, she prayed that he would understand why she had made the omission in the first place.

"Jack...had help. Someone else is involved."

"Someone else," he echoed. "I don't like it when things are kept from me."

She kept her face devoid of any reaction, knowing full well how gangs didn't like things being kept from them.

"He has a...partner, a girlfriend of some kind I think. Elizabeth Swann."

If Arturo was angry over it, he wasn't showing it.

"And this Swann woman knows about the case, and about the evidence?"

"I believe so."

"I don't like this. I don't know her."

"She seems...trustworthy enough. If Jack trusts her, I wouldn't get too paranoid about her."

"Jack Sparrow normally trusts no one, and cares about others even less, so that makes me question whether he does truly...trust this  _mujer_."

From what she had been able to see, Jack had felt far more than trust for her. She had never seen him pull his gun as quickly as he had at that party. And Jack rarely stuck his neck out for anyone even a little bit. He was a man that played for himself, and only himself.

"Oh, know Jack well do you?"

He leveled his gaze at her from across the table.

"I know Jack well enough. Just like you know Jack well enough. Why do you suppose you didn't tell him the real reason that you hired him?"

" _I did-_ "

" _No_ ,  _tu escucha_ , you  _told him_  you had  _something stolen_ , but you didn't tell him what it was. Por qué?"

The muscles around her eyes were starting to hurt from glaring at him.

"I...didn't think he would do it."

"Exactamente,  _didn't think he would do it-"_

"That, and I didn't think it was necessary for him to know the details. As long as he did the job, that was all I needed from him."

"Derecho. Have you met this  _Swann_?"

"Briefly, in India. Jack threatened my life over her, at the business end of a Beretta."

"Is that so? Can't say I have ever heard of him doing that for anyone."

"He  _is_  rarely inclined to be protective. Pulling a gun on someone though, he does that plenty, but normally, they end up dead, instead of sitting here in front of you."

"And why do you suppose he didn't kill you?"

"Truthfully, I don't know. We  _have_  a history. But, maybe it was because he was too interested in the situation, you can never really tell with him."

Their history. A one night stand in '07. Both of them had been...not quite sober, and it was a mere aligning of events that had even put them in the same place at all. It meant nothing, but it was a bit of fun to distract from the chaos of the world. Although, she had the distinct impression that he hadn't enjoyed it nearly as much as she had, judging by how he had immediately got in the shower without saying a word to her, and opted to sleep on the couch rather than in the bed.

"Well, if this...Elizabeth becomes a problem,  _at all_ , it's on you. You will take care of her, si?"

She didn't have a hope of "taking care" of Elizabeth Swann anymore than she had a hope of taking down the entire cartel, with Jack protecting her. She didn't think  _anyone_  had a hope of even getting  _close_  enough to harm the woman that Jack loved unless someone took Jack down first.

"Obviously. So, now that I have held up my end of the deal, are you going to hold up yours?"

" _Obviously_ ," he mocked.

"Am I going to collect-"

He cut her off before she could finish.

"Gabriella will be coming with us as well. Once you give the evidence to us, you will be given directions to go and get her. Then our deal is  _encima_."

"And you're telling the truth?"

" _Suzuki,_ when do I ever lie?"

All the  _fucking time_.

She pushed her chair back, nodding at him as he blew smoke at her from the cigar that was now in his hand.

"I'll see you in Britain, then."

"Adios, Suzuki."

* * *

She sat at the kitchen table, stirring sugar into the cup of coffee she had made, wearing a hoodie,  _Jack's_  hoodie that she had plucked from his closet, appreciating the quiet of the house when Chris walked in looking like he was still half asleep, glancing over at her in confusion, then looking in the direction of Jack's bedroom.

"Where's-"

"Still sleeping."

He stared at her for a couple more seconds, before she raised her head to answer his unspoken question.

"I  _can_  wake up before Jack, and get out of bed while he's still in bed. I'm not physically attached to him."

A quiet "not right now anyway" slipped out under his breath, earning him a tired eye roll.

"How long have you been up?" he asked, starting coffee for himself.

"Only for about twenty minutes or so. Listen, um, can you...can you keep a secret from Jack?"

The anxiety had hit her like a train the moment she had opened her eyes this morning, about the job. It just seemed like something was going to go wrong, and she couldn't shake the feeling. Of course, the ruminating about that had led her to ruminate about everything else that had been bothering her, namely, the so close yet so far away possibility of getting the  _Pearl_  back.

His hand faltered on the coffee pot as he side-eyed her. The suddenness of the question looked like it confused him.

"I...probably  _can_ , but I'm not sure I want to."

She sighed, clutching her cup a little tighter, crossing her legs under the table.

"It's nothing...that he would be angry about if he were to find out. I just need to talk about it with someone else."

"...Alright, what's up?"

"You know about Jack's ship?"

The chair opposite her made a scraping sound against the floor when he pulled it back to sit at the table with her.

"Yeah, the  _Black Pearl_. He's talked about it a few times. When he found that little model ship he has in his bedroom, he lectured Shawn and me about the differences between that one and his for like an hour. The sails on the little one were 'all wrong' and the figurehead was 'completely retarded' compared to his."

She nearly spilled her coffee with how quickly she started giggling.

"Of course Jack would complain about it still. He loved that ship, the  _real_  one. When it sunk, it broke my heart as much as it broke his. I had never seen him that lifeless, that...empty. Haven't since…"

"Well, I reckon that you're the reason he pulled out of it. I don't know what the fuck he would do if he ever lost  _you._  You're not allowed to die. I'm  _not_  equipped to deal with a madman Jack Sparrow."

"...I'm not sure what I would do if I lost him either," she said quietly, gazing out of the window. "And I'll try my best to not get killed. Anyway, I came across this...article a few days ago that...some props company in the US is rebuilding historic ships...they're investing-"

" _Holy mother of christ,_ " came out of Chris in a rushed whisper, cutting her off, and she looked up to find him staring at her with awe. "Are you...are you saying that you want to rebuild...you're saying you want to rebuild the  _Pearl_?"

A sad little smile made its way across her mouth.

"Yeah, it was an idea I had. The only problem is, it would cost about 12 million, and I don't have that kind of money."

His breath left him in a whoosh.

"12 million... _damn_. I don't... _damn."_

"Yeah…"

It took him a moment to say anything else, and she had secretly hoped that he would commit himself to helping her find the funds.

"You...you realize that we need to find a way to get that money, right? Can you imagine…"

"Oh I can," she said wistfully. "I just can't believe that I never thought of doing it before."

"Just...where would we put it?"

"He...he has a little cottage cabin sort of thing in Jamaica. Actually, it's quite close to where my old mansion used to be,  _well_ , my father's mansion really. There's a beach with a fairly large plot of land a few miles from the mansion that just sat there for the longest time, then Jack and I were visiting one day, and out of the blue he was just like 'I'm going to put a cabin here'. And he did.

"The beach has a little cove, an inlet, with a lovely rock formation that creates a tunnel, well, it's hard to explain unless you see it. Jack built some stairs going down to that part. The cove is big enough to dock his ship in, I believe."

They both sat there, thinking about... _everything._

"Can you imagine...the  _reveal_?"

That was the moment that she had been daydreaming about since the idea had entered her head.

"You know...I say I can, but I really can't."

" _Lizzie,_ if you brought that man down those stairs and he saw the  _Pearl_ sitting there, I think he would go into cardiac arrest. You should probably wait to show it to him until you get onto the beach because he could just  _faint_  too."

The mere image of  _Jack_ fainting sent her into a fit of laughter.

"It would be a beautiful moment, and  _before you ask_ , of course we can have one of you hiding to take pictures, but please, keep them tasteful. Jack doesn't like his privacy invaded, so if at any point I feel like that's happening, I'll give you a signal to back off."

" _Fine_ , fine. What about when he proposes to you?"

She nearly choked on her coffee at that. First Ringa, now  _him_?

"When... _he proposes_?" she whispered once she had a good enough handle on her voice.

Chris looked at her like she was stupid.

"You sound like you didn't have any expectations of that happening."

After sitting there in shock for as long as socially acceptable, she looked at Chris like  _he_ was stupid.

"You...you do realize that we spent almost 300 years just working up to being in a relationship, right? Don't ask me to regale you as to why it took that long because we'll be here all day."

"Yeah, I do realize it, and it boggles my mind. Stubborn idiots."

" _Well_ , let me just say that it was a combination of insecurity, self-doubt, constant time apart, anxiety, not wanting to ruin what we already had. You know, once we...or  _I_ let it go on for so long, I just built it up in my head so much that it became this...monster that I wanted to bury, rather than face."

He rolled his eyes at her, sipping at his coffee.

" _Whatever,_ you're both still idiots. Back to what we were talking about. If you think that man has no plans to propose to you, you're crazy."

Images of Jack getting down on his knee, holding a ring up to her, was something that her mind just couldn't process.

"I...he once said that he didn't like the idea of marriage, a long time ago, before we found the Fountain even. Said it was-"

"Do you wanna know how I know?" he asked, cutting her off.

She looked at him expectantly, but she wasn't sure if she did  _want_ to know.

"When you were gone, this happened a few years ago, like…'10? We were sitting in a bar in Belize, nursing rum, of course, and he was just intoxicated enough to open up a little bit. He said, and I quote: "I wish she was here still, you know. Looking back on it now, I really see how stupid I was, how I should have worked a little harder to keep her around. Proposed to her or something, I don't fucking know. Should have told her I loved her, fucking  _something_."

It hit her like a train, and she knew immediately that Chris had not planned on revealing that.

"Are...are you s-"

"Swear to god. I told you he went to some pretty dark places. Every time he got drunk enough, he would always...talk about you, how much he regretted never telling you, how he thought he finally drove you away because of it. I honestly thought that he was going to turn to heroin again a few times. The last time, I put my foot down and told him to knock that shit the fuck off."

The culmination of the fragile emotional state that she was already in because of her worrying, combined with this new information was making her head swim, and she could feel the pain behind her eyes, the tell-tale ache of oncoming tears.

"I need to go to the bathroom," she announced suddenly, pushing her chair back, hiding her face from him as much as possible. He watched her go, looking a bit panicked.

" _Hey_ , I wasn't trying to make it sound like it was your fault-"

"I know... _just_...I know," she threw over her shoulder as she retreated to Jack's bedroom, stepping through as quietly as possible, glancing at him to make sure he was still sleeping, and then crossing the room to the bathroom, closing the door behind her without making a sound.

She couldn't stop the tears as she slid down the wall, and she  _hated_  herself for it, hated that she couldn't just put it behind her, hated that she had to keep bringing it up. But just knowing how awful Jack had felt without her...she couldn't get past it. Couldn't get past the images of him, eyes dead to the world, uncaring about anything. Her body shook with emotion as she cried silently, not wanting to bother Jack, not wanting him to get annoyed with her, or...she didn't even know what…

It was all just so  _stupid_. The lack of money for the  _Pearl_ , this stupid job, their stupidity with each other. Every time she went over everything again, every time the thought cycle started again, the tears would gain new life, and it became harder and harder for her to keep quiet.

Suddenly she heard rustling in the bedroom, and she  _prayed_  that he wasn't going to try and come in here. The door to the hallway opened and closed after a few minutes and she nearly choked on her relief.

* * *

He padded into the kitchen, glancing at Chris who was sitting there looking like he had killed someone.

"...What's wrong with you? Do I need to help you hide a body?"

"...Uh...no…"

"If you say so," he said, grabbing a Coke out of the fridge. "Have you seen Lizzie? She apparently woke up before me."

Rather unusual, for her.

"...Yeah...she was just in here. She's in your bedroom now-"

"Nope, was just in there, obviously. Unless she can go invis-"

Chris's face grew tight with frustration, as though he was battling with himself.

"I... _dammit..._ I told her more about when she was gone, about...about  _you…_ "

He froze with the can halfway to his mouth, making a mental note to strangle the man.

"... _fucking Christ_ ," he whispered softly, his shoulders dropping in defeat. "She went in my bedroom?"

"That's...that's the direction I saw her go in."

The can of Coke was left on the counter forgotten as he immediately headed back.

* * *

The bedroom door opened again and she froze, listening.

A quiet knocking made her jump, made her heart accelerate frantically.

"Lizzie?"

The door wasn't locked, and she knew that he was going to come in whether she answered or not, so she buried her head in her knees and tried to make herself, her anguish, seem as hidden as possible, since she couldn't fucking tell him the root reason that she was upset anyway. The gargantuan concept of him _proposing_ to her, of him thinking of it, of the entire thing, was something that she couldn't wrap her head around yet. And she couldn't fucking tell him about the  _Pearl_ either...

Air rushed past her when the door opened, and she heard a quiet " _hey"_ when he knelt next to her, tugging on her arm. She shook her head, paralyzed with panic.

"No love, you don't get to hide from me," and then he was pulling her up and into his arms, keeping her there despite her lame attempts to struggle. When she accepted that he wasn't letting her go, she melted against him and cried until her tears started petering off slowly, as though he was repelling them.

"I'm sorry, I just-this job, the stupid separation between us, our stubbornness-"

"What-" he paused to wait until she was listening to him. "What the fuck are you apologizing for?"

She looked up at him, at his worried expression, then looked away again, a hot blush of shame spreading through her face.

"I just hate to keep being so emotional, I'm not normally-"

" _Stop_ ," he said, shaking his head. "You never need to apologize to me for  _feeling_. You can cry on me all day long if that's what you wanna do. I don't care."

"I  _know_ , I just feel like I'm beating a dead horse at this point. I didn't want to annoy you-" she argued, trying to struggle out of his grip again.

"Hey,  _hey_ , look at me." He stopped until she made eye contact with him. "I don't care if we talk about something a hundred times, if it still bothers you, or if it starts to bother you again, you need to tell me."

A few beats went by while he waited for her to absorb what he said.

"...Okay?"

She wiped away the rest of the tears on her face and nodded.

"Okay."

"Good," he said, kissing her cheek. "Let's go sit on the bed."

The last few hiccups escaped her as she followed him, climbing up to sit in front of him while he sat against the headboard, rubbing his hands over his face.

"Chris...he said he told you...things."

"He um," she paused to fidget with the comforter. "He said that you would always talk about me, talk about how you regretted not telling me you loved me, that you thought that's what made me leave. He said...he said you almost turned to drugs again..."

He suddenly had a far away look in his eyes, as though he was reliving things, going through memories.

"I'm...I'm not going to lie to you. There were several times when I almost picked up the needle again, and the first couple of times I was able to stop myself, but that last time, Chris literally found me in the garage at like four in the morning about to shoot up. He looked like he wanted to beat the shit out of me. Probably would have if I hadn't let him take the drugs.

"I'm also not going to keep it a secret that I was...I don't even think depressed is a strong enough word for whatever the fuck I was. More like dead, maybe. I just kind of walked through life...with a really apathetic attitude, except for the times where my brain just wouldn't let me ignore all of the shit that bothered me.  _But_ , you have got to stop feeling like it's all your fault-"

"I just can't help but feel so... _guilty_  that I made you that miserable-"

"Lizzie, listen to me. I could have picked up the phone as easily as you. But I was just as stubborn as you were. I didn't think you wanted to talk to me, I didn't think that there was a point, I didn't think.. _look_ , we can go around and around in circles about it, but at the end of the day, we were both just stupid."

She looked him and then looked away, focusing her attention on the mural behind him.

"I...actually wanted to ask about something...something before any of that. It's what really sent me into the bathroom, I think."

"What's that?" he asked scooting closer to her to take her hands in his, playing with them.

"A few nights ago, you told me that you thought I knew that you were in love with me. If you thought I knew, then you must have thought that I was just stringing you along for fun. So...why did you stay?"

His fingers faltered on hers, and he started tapping one on her hand in contemplation.

"Maybe I should rephrase that. I didn't think you knew outright and was just ignoring it. I thought...I thought I was expressing it well enough for you to pick up on it, but there was no way in hell that I was ever going to  _ask_ if I was or not…because I'm an idiot sometimes, you know."

 _Dammit_ , Jack.

"...Oh."

He stretched his legs out in front of him, patting his lap.

"C'mere."

Her body reminded her of how much it ached when she crawled forward to arrange herself on top of him, straddling his hips.

"I...I didn't know, Jack. I...I was always so afraid to ask, to-"

"-Change what we already had? Me too. I figured that I would rather have you as a really close... _friend_  over scaring you away. Obviously stupid looking back…"

A giggle bubbled up over his choice of the word  _friend_. Even back then, the concept of being friends had always been alien to them. They were more  _enemies_  than friends in the beginning, always bickering about something, or dueling back and forth with sarcastic comments. Then their physical relationship went far beyond anything that friends would do.

"Think I could write a dissertation on all of the ridiculous reasons that we never just ended our struggle?" he asked, smiling softly at her.

"Maybe."

"We're together now love," he said, brushing her hair away from her face. "Happily forever after and all that-"

Her laughter at that cut him off, and he just smiled instead, pulling her in for a tight hug.

"What else is bothering you?" he asked when he drew back.

"This job...I just can't shake the feeling that we aren't taking it seriously enough. Like something terrible is going to happen…And you act so nonchalantly about it…"

His entire body seemed to sag like someone had just deflated it.

"I'm...I'm worried too, a lot more than I let on. But like I said before, whatever happens, we can handle it. I won't let anything happen to you, darling."

They sat together for a little while, listening to the sounds of the morning, then the sounds of rain as it started to fall lightly.

Suddenly, her face brightened, and he stared at her impatiently.

"...are you going to tell me why you suddenly look like a kid in a candy store?"

She swatted his shoulder, leaning in for a kiss. A distraction is what they needed, some kind of escape from the mess.

"I know what we can do."

"...what?"

"How do some chipotle grillers sound?"

An excited grin spread across his face, and she knew that he was grateful for the distraction too just from the way the tension left his body.

"I like the way you think love."

* * *

How in the fuck was she going to explain this?

She hadn't found an answer yet, and she had been sitting there, in the conference room for an hour waiting for everyone to arrive.

The man on the phone, his voice, she couldn't get it out of her head. Everything he said kept replaying like some kind of damaged tape that someone had forgotten in the player.

"Inspector Trivoly?"

Being outsmarted sounded unlikely, almost impossible to her, and then this  _man_ , this stranger managed to pull the wool over her eyes with one phone conversation. It made her want to hand over her badge and gun to become a farmer in the middle of nowhere because she clearly didn't deserve this job.

"...Inspector Trivoly?"

And the smooth tone of his voice, the confidence with which he spun his manipulations...it was  _masterful_ , almost toxic in its ability to make you listen. And listen she had, even when she had wanted to hang up, even before the threat, she had listened more closely than she had in a long time to anything. She couldn't recount a single thing that the radio said this morning, but she could damn near recite the entire conversation she had with  _him_.

"... _Monica_."

Her head snapped up to find the room full, of  _people_ , all staring her like vultures eyeing a steaming corpse, as though she had all of the answers, as though she was the solution to all of their problems.

"Right, sorry. The purpose of this conference is to expand on what was discussed briefly in the post-emergency briefing yesterday and to gather any new information that we can. I would like to set this up in a question answer format, that way we can take it slowly and keep omission at a minimum."

Cyril nodded in support from her left, standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, acting like he was Jaime  _goddamn_  Lannister, and she was Cersei.

She did  _not_ need a protector.

"This all started with a phone call," Cyril began, glancing at her. "A man of unknown identification made the call around noon, 12:02 to be exact. We have the recording of the call here for all of us to listen to."

The click of the player made her lip curl in annoyance. The last thing she wanted to bloody do was listen to the damn conversation  _again._

It was like it had hypnotizing powers, as everyone in the room listened, without making a sound, hanging on every single goddamn word. Some of them even looked disappointed when it was over.

"Inspector Trivoly, can you describe the phone call in your own words please?"

She couldn't stop the glare she sent Cyril's way, and he put his hands up in a 'sorry, it's protocol' gesture.

"When he first started talking, he sounded like he was trying to establish a relationship with me, asking if my day was busy, and then he transitioned right into getting information once he had me listening. It was almost like...he had something else going on besides the threat he was about to make. After he finished that, he went back to talking about me. I think...that he was trying to figure out how I was going to react to it. It was as though he wanted to make... _sure_  that I was going to be able to handle it."

"But it didn't occur to you that the threat was a diversion at that point?"

"No, it didn't. When he talked about the drums of oil, he said it in such a serious tone, as though he was announcing that a meteor was about to strike Earth. He was probably making sure that I was going to treat it like a serious threat."

"Right," Cyril said, smirking at her dry humor. "Okay, first course of action. Write this down, people. We need to figure out who made that call, where they made it from if possible, and where the person is now."

The scratching of pens on paper was one of the best sounds in the world to her. It meant that there was progression, that there was something happening.

"Monica, what happened next?"

She made a huge fool of herself.

"I immediately pressed the emergency alarm button and had Rilkes get you on the phone. I then proceeded to follow evacuation protocol and directed everyone as per your instructions to the HMRC building. I called SO13, and ordered Unwin and Slaymaker to transfer the critical evidence to Hampstead."

He turned to address the room.

"We stood in the HMRC courtyard while the two bomb teams swept both buildings, finding nothing. The threat, as we know now, was fake. But, there was a reason behind it. Monica?"

"As I said, the man on the phone sounded like he had something else going on, but I also said that it hadn't occurred to me that the threat was fake at that point. We have since learned that the threat was made as a catalyst to get the evidence transport in motion. Unwin, Slaymaker, can you please tell the room what you experienced?"

The two men stepped forth. Unwin looked like he wanted nothing more than to escape for lunch because he kept glancing outside, and Slaymaker looked like he just wanted to die.

"We began the evidence transport, as usual, mum, then just as we made it onto Park Lane, two sports cars boxed us in, one in the back, and one in the front."

"Can you identify which car models they were?"

They both fidgeted, sweating nervously.

"Sorry mum, we're not sure. All we can tell you is that the front one was a darker color, green or brown maybe, and the one in the back was black."

"That's fine. Did you get a look at who was driving them?"

"No, we didn't."

Of course not. Anything to make her job more difficult.

"Alright, what happened next?"

"We...we can't remember clearly, but the back door of the truck was opened somehow, and then we saw a person, can't remember what they looked like. After that point, it's all blank, until we woke up."

"And where was the truck parked when you woke up?"

"An industrial park a little past the Marble Arch."

She had sent out a team to search for the truck as soon as she had been able.

"Thank you, constables," Cyril said. "We have combed the truck for any evidence. Unfortunately, one of the suspects shot out the front camera, so that can't help us. Nothing much for evidence either. They covered their tracks well. The solution used in the tranquilizer darts had memory inhibitors, which accounts for the lack of recollection."

"We have retrieved both the truck and the evidence that was still inside," she continued for him. "There was only one box taken from the scene. Unfortunately, it was the most critical. The box containing the evidence that links the Sinaloa Cartel, Martin Ramos specifically, to a murder in Japan of a prosecutor, and to a possible sex trafficking ring involving the Yakuza and the Russians, was taken. It is our hypothesis that the Cartel is behind the theft somehow."

"Our goals now are to identify who made the threat call, figure out where the evidence is, and if it has been damaged, reassess our case. When the identification of the suspect is made, do not make contact until I have been notified. That's all."

"We do not believe there is any further threat to the police or the surrounding area at this time, but we will continue to monitor any signs of danger. We also do not believe that any of the suspects will make an attempt to contact the police again, so finding them is completely our responsibility."

* * *

Her current mood was a far cry from the turmoil that she had been in in the morning. She felt like that was a strange dream, worlds away from the warmth and contentment she was basking in now.

But she still couldn't get the idea of him  _proposing_  out of her head. It felt odd to think about, as though it was something that she  _should_  have considered but had just... _not_. Of course, it was the logical next step in a relationship for most people, but for whatever reason, she hadn't imagined him doing it.

Until now.

The very thought sent butterflies into her stomach, turning her into feeling like she was stuck in some kind of romantic comedy, and she rather loved it, the thought of being _married_ to Jack.

' _I'm so ready to be married_.'

She still remembered saying that to him all those years ago, sitting on the steps of the  _Pearl_ , nursing the bottle of rum that he had offered her, with his sly grin and hopeful eyes, just before he had in fact... _proposed_ to her, in a fashion.

' _You know...Lizzie, I_ am _captain of a ship. And being...captain of a ship, I could, in fact, perform a mar-ri-age, right here, right on this deck, right...now.'_

God, it was like it was yesterday, and she also still remembered the temptation of his offer, as the very idea of being in his cabin, on his bed,  _with him_ , had felt like something that she had no choice but to gravitate to. How she had managed to wait until she did, that night in Shipwreck Cove, she had no idea.

"What are you thinking about, love?"

She had vaguely heard the door open, had vaguely heard him walk in, but she was so caught up in her reminiscing that she hadn't really registered it.

"The time you tried not so subtly to get me in your cabin."

He stopped scrolling his phone and glanced up at her.

"Oh? Well, there was more than one, so which are you referring to?"

A little smirk adorned the corner of his mouth, and she knew that he knew exactly which one she was referring to. She acted out his little 'we are very much alike, you and I, I and you,  _us_ ' line, deepening her voice as much as possible, and giggled when it nearly made him fall over with laughter.

"I mean...was I wrong?" he asked once he calmed down a bit, crossing the room to search in his shelves.

" _No_ , I suppose not. I'm honestly not sure how I survived waiting."

"Waiting?"

"For  _you_."

"I can't tell if you mean me, or  _this_ ," he snarked, turning halfway towards her to point at his midsection.

" _Well_ , I have always been waiting for  _this_ ," she motioned her finger at the two of them, "but I was referring to  _that_ , among other things."

He shrugged, a little infuriating shrug that had her glaring at him.

"Hey, not saying that it's your fault, but you had a hundred opportunities.  _I_ wasn't going to complain regardless of when you chose to end your frustration."

A little blush stained her cheeks when she remembered the real reason she had put it off after Will had left.

"I was actually waiting for you to make a move. I had this fantasy of you seducing me in like...the hallway, or somewhere, then once I succumbed, you would carry me to-"

She stopped when she realized that she was staring at her with an incredulous look on his face, his mouth just barely hanging open.

"Are you telling me that all I had to do was kiss you silly against a wall or something, maybe sneak my hand in your breeches, and you would have  _let me_  carry you to my cabin?"

"I mean, yeah-"

"Lizzie, I was trying to be a  _gentleman_  by letting you control everything, though I will admit, by the time you did drag me to your cabin, I was getting a little worried."

"You, a  _gentleman_? You spent half the time before Will left trying to come on to me!"

"Only half? And that tactic didn't seem to be working too well, so I figured that if I let you come to me, you would be more inclined-"

"Oh hell, so when I actually wanted you to come on to me, you decided to retreat? You're infuria-"

The rest of the word was cut off when he finished crossing the room to where she was sitting on the edge of the bed, catching her mouth with his, pushing her onto her back, going down with her. Her legs spread to give him room as he laced his fingers with hers, pinning her hands above her head, the weight of his body sending small thrills to her core.

"It  _was_ certainly worth the wait though, wasn't it?" he asked when he broke away from her lips to give her neck attention as she giggled.

" _More_  than worth it, I think."

Then she realized that he had carried something over with him from the shelf.

"What's that?" All she could see was the color of it, a sort of...elvish green.

"My photo album. Since we are apparently on the topic of reminiscing, I figured we could amend the loss of your photos by looking through mine. That is unless you would just rather have sex."

She gazed up at him, playing with his hair.

"I think we can put that off until we get that stupid box out of our house."

"... _our_ house?"

The slip didn't register with her until he repeated it, and another blush invaded her cheeks.

"You're  _mine_ , so I figure that your house might as well be mine too."

Her arms came up to clutch at his back as he leaned down to kiss her again, sending sparks flying through her body.

"No argument from me, darling."

She watched him, smiling, as he arranged himself to sit across from her, flipping the book open.

The first photo was an 8x10 of her leaning against a palm tree.

"Oh, this was in the Cayman Islands, wasn't it? I was a little tipsy there, I believe."

"You did have some rum in you at this point. And yep, the Caymans. We had just finished a job, this was the one that we weren't aware we were both hired until we both showed up at the same spot after trying to sneak around each other for a half hour-"

"Oh  _yeah_ , I remember. Scared the shit out of me when you snuck up behind me. You figured out it was me before I figured out it was you."

"'Scared the shit out of you' here meaning that I pushed you against the wall and kissed you until you couldn't think straight."

It had been a job to steal the inventory books from a museum in '68, kind of odd since she was normally stealing the items from museums, not documents. As it turned out, someone else had hired Jack to steal them as well.

"You were lucky that I knew your kiss so well. You could have ended up flayed to-"

" _Lizzie_ , I took your knife before you could even think to use it on me. Didn't particularly fancy getting cut to ribbons."

"And kissing me is worth the risk?"

"Of course it is, darling."

He flipped to the next page, and she found herself looking at two 5x7's. The top one was of them swimming in the ocean, and the bottom one was of them sitting at the bar in the little restaurant close to where they had been swimming.

"Oh god, how could I forget that top one. I swear I saw a shark in the water-"

"And I kept telling you it was just a shadow, and you didn't believe me, wouldn't even listen to my argument."

"There was a  _shark_ , in the water. I know there was. You were crazy to stay in there."

"I mean...did I get bit?  _No_. I even continued to try and convince you in the next picture, at the bar, and you still wouldn't listen. Though, the argument became far more amusing the more alcohol you had."

She rolled her eyes. Of course, he  _would_  remember that detail.

"Yeah, of course you would remember how I forgot how to pronounce the word  _shark_  at one point, so I started to substitute S words in its place-"

"Yeah, like sword, sun, shit, sandal...oh my god I thought I was going to die from laughter."

As he flipped to the next page, she crawled across the bed to open the nightstand drawer, finding what she was looking for.

It was the 5x7 of her laying on the lagoon shore, completely naked and freshly ravaged. Jack snapped the book shut and leaned over to look with her.

"See? The way the sunlight is coming through the trees. It highlights you. It's a gorgeous picture."

"It could be to do with the fact that we just had sex, too."

He chuckled against her shoulder, his hand slipping under her shirt, circling around to cup her breast.

"Possibly. Mmm, we could try and recreate that photo. Maybe not with the lagoon, but my... _our_  bed would do just fine I think."

The prospect met no argument from her when his fingers started to play with her nipple, teasing it to a hardened point. She reached down and lifted her shirt off, twisting around to let him climb on top of her, thrusting her chest at him.

"God I love these," he whispered as he descended to take a nipple in his mouth, swirling his tongue around it in hot circles, teasing it with his teeth. A rush of moisture pooled at her core when she felt his erection, hardening against her through their clothes with each undulation of her hips.

"...Jack,  _Jack_ …"

He teased the other breast with his hand, a saucy chuckle escaping him at her impatience.

"You have words, darling."

"Words?  _Words_ , oh god don't ask me to use words right now,  _just_ …"

It turned into a moan when he worked her gray gym shorts down just far enough for him to slip his hand inside, finding her center immediately, sliding two fingers inside her wet heat. Her back arched at the contact, the knot in her stomach already tightening as she drew in breath without exhaling, then his thumb found her already swollen clit and she cried out in satisfaction.

Somehow she found the focus to work his gray trousers down with her feet, freeing his cock from its confines, her hand diving down to wrap around him, earning her a hiss of approval.

He freed her nipple and arched up to whisper in her ear. "I need your mouth, darling."

It wasn't often that he stopped her pleasure to ask for his own, but she didn't mind, since having him in her mouth was intoxicating in and of itself.

"Roll over then,  _needy_."

He chuckled again when he complied, raising his hips to help her relieve him of his trousers. Not wasting any time, she leaned down and let his length sink into her mouth as far as it could go, dragging her lips back up slowly, sucking as she went. His hands immediately tangled in her hair.

"...Oh  _god_  darling…" was all he managed as her mouth worked him, her tongue playing, running over the underside of his cock, teasing around the swollen tip when she nearly let him pop free from her mouth, before sinking back down.

The noises he made when she pleasured him like this. Little whines, deep growls, her name in a hiss, beautiful velvety moans, they all sent spikes of pleasure through her. He hardened even more inside her mouth as her strokes sped up, and he started to thrust lightly, before she held him down with one hand, glancing up to meet his glazed over eyes with a slightly dangerous quirk of her eyebrow. He gave her a soft smile before he was swept away again.

"...oh love, almost,  _almost_ …"

The black sheets became clutched in his hands as he started to chant her name under his breath, breaking off into nothing but puffs of air when she wrapped her free hand around his sac, massaging it. Then his body went taut, jerking up once, twice, before he was coming inside her mouth with a moan that sent another jolt of pleasure through her.

When he finally quieted, she crawled back up his body and laid her head on his chest, listening to his frantic heartbeat.

"I fucking love you," came out of him as he exhaled, his body giving one last shudder.

She giggled, playing with his nipple, her laughter increased when he twitched, giving her a small yelp.

" _Sensitive_ , it's-"

Whatever he was going to say was cut off when she rolled onto her back and tugged his hand back down to her core. He rewarded her with a sly grin, and just as he slipped his fingers back inside of her, curling them up, his thumb finding her clit, they heard Chris's voice from in the kitchen.

" _I think Suzuki's here_."

Her disappointment came out of her mouth in a quiet snarl, but he kept his fingers inside for a couple more seconds, taming her with a sweet kiss.

"Right when we get back in here, darling, I promise."


	17. Crystallization

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 17! I hope everyone enjoys this one! ;)

September 14th, Monday Night, 9:30 PM

* * *

Being interrupted during any kind of task is perhaps the paramount annoyance that a person can experience. It makes the mind switch to something else entirely, something that has nothing to do with the previous task, an entirely new book when you haven't finished the last one yet, a new song when the last one was still in the middle of the first chorus, or going from a lovely beach stroll to driving home because your house is on fire.

Fragments of the thing you left behind stay and taunt you, trying to drag you back, invading your thoughts, polluting your attempts to concentrate on the new subject.

Most tasks she could handle abandoning. Sure, it was a minor inconvenience, but they could always be returned to, rebuilt, reorganized. What she could  _not_ handle was being interrupted while in the midst of any kind of sexual pleasure,  _especially_ when Jack was involved.

A wide breadth of experiences and vocabulary could be used to compare what being cut off from an orgasm felt like. For example, swimming in the ocean, a fair bit below the surface, then attempting to swim back up, only to discover that the surface kept raising higher and higher making relief from the depths impossible.

Or perhaps being shoved in a bonfire while forced to feel every single iota of heat with no possibility of the sweet release of death. Or being an evil genius finally having everything in order to take over the world, only to have the hero destroy all of your plans at the very last second, cueing the dramatic ' _nooooooo'_. Maybe being forced to sit in a room divided with a pane of glass, you on one side tied to a chair, with twelve million dollars cash on the other side.

It was an absolutely taunting thing, in the moment, like being shoved out of a pleasant dream, or being told that the winning lottery ticket in your hand is actually a joke, or for the love of your life to shout ' _just kidding_ ' as they get down on one knee.

Growing heat, the wildness, the abandon, the completely  _freeing_  effect that pleasure had could be twisted into a dangerous thing if left unsatisfied, unfulfilled right on the cusp of the tumble downwards into the point of no return, when the lungs start to forget how to inhale and exhale, when the muscles tighten to near unbearable levels, when the only function the brain can handle is making random noises spill from the mouth. The desperate  _sharp_  longing sets in almost instantaneously and the only kind of thoughts your brain can produce are strategies that lead you back to falling back into the sweet haven of pleasure.

The emotions that such an interruption brought to the surface were impressive. It was an acute feeling of anger, a pure lively type of anger, that made her pissed at  _everything_ , at the color of the wall, at the state of her fingernails, how frizzy her hair was, how dark it was in the room, how the floor felt against her feet, or for the floor just  _being_ there. If someone's voice had  _just_ the wrong tone, or if someone walked in front of her, or if someone actually tried to joke with her, all of those scenarios made her fantasize about slapping them.

"You had  _better_  not disappoint me," she had told him in a frustrated whisper when had withdrawn his fingers from her, the pleasure fogging her brain making her forget that Jack was incapable of being disappointing when it came to anything sexual.

He had leaned down to give her a sweet smiling kiss with undertones of amusement at her predicament, the terrible man, even though he knew full well the horror of being cut off from an orgasm, since there had been plenty of times when she had been interrupted with him in her mouth, or when they had both been interrupted with him inside of her. It took a great force for him to pull her off of him, accompanied by some very colorful curse words that could either be forced out in a quiet growl or shouted at the unlucky soul that was responsible. It took an even greater force for him to stop making love to her, and  _that_ was usually followed by him grabbing whichever gun was closest to him completely on impulse to shoot at anything that even resembled an interruption.

In fact, she would wager that Jack was turned into even more of a moody arse than she did when it happened, glaring and scowling at anyone and everything, clenching his fists, and  _god forbid_  should anyone try to  _talk_ to him. Verbal exercises could turn into a screaming match with him faster than it took for him to fire a gun.

When he had climbed off of the bed to retrieve his trousers, sending her teasing glances, making ' _haha you have to suffer_ ' noises, she had sat there, reigning in both her impulse to just finish herself off with her own hand,  _Suzuki_ and the entire world be damned, and her impulse to shoot the fucking woman on sight.

Apparently he had also decided to take a little bit of pity on her, because even though the glare she was sending him would have killed a lesser man, he still pulled her into his arms and whispered some very choice words describing exactly what he planned to do to her the second they made it back into the bedroom.

Which is where she found herself now, with her head cradled against his warm chest, her heart beating frantically from the after effects of his touch, a warm blush of frustration coloring her skin, and yet, her glare was quickly turning into a smile, not a very big smile, more like a smile that was  _just_ managing to peek through a person possessed by the devil. She was certainly hampered by such an ailment, as the devil himself, an intoxicating angelic devil, was whispering against her neck.

"If you want someone to let your grievances out on, you can let Suzuki in. I know how much you  _like_  her."

A delicious air of orchestration tinged his voice, and she immediately got the distinct impression that he had been waiting for the moment where she could show the woman her place since he had deprived her of it when they had first met.

"You're too  _sweet_ ," was her reply, feeling a bit  _charged_  herself at the prospect. As a general rule, she wasn't territorial around women. She rarely felt the need to prostrate herself as superior or challenge other women to a battle of superiority, but for whatever reason,  _Suzuki_  was the exception to the rule.

His answering snicker told her that she was right.

"You're a King, darling. It's only natural for you to mark your territory."

He pulled away from her, his hand lingering within hers for just a second longer before he was leaving the bedroom, and with a long blustering sigh, she followed him down the hallway to the kitchen.

Ringa was sitting on the couch, nursing a glass of wine, while Shawn and Chris were sitting opposite her, talking about something or other. She caught the words 'car' and 'race'but didn't listen long enough to hear anything else.

Three sharp knocks on the door echoed through the house, and she crossed the room to open it, clearing her face of any kind of emotion. The lighting inside the house was a strange contrast to the moonlit front porch, the sound of the crickets  _particularly_  annoying at that moment.

" _Suzuki_."

It wasn't quite submission that entered the woman's face, but there wasn't an open challenge there either. More like a curiosity of something that could potentially kill you, similar to how some people have a fascination with poisonous snakes.

"Elizabeth. May I come in?"

Briefly she considered saying ' _no, I was in the middle of something, go wait outside until I'm finished_ ', but she stepped aside to let her enter, catching a side-eye from Jack that told her that he knew exactly what was going through her head, his lips curving into a smirk as though he hoped that she  _did_  have some kind of sarcastic comment lingering behind her barely hidden clenched jaw.

"Your house is as nice as ever, Jack."

Under what fucking circumstances had Suzuki been in Jack's house? The question was almost verbalized before Jack responded before she could say anything.

"Your box is over there," he jerked his thumb to the kitchen table. "But before you take it and vanish, I think we all need to have a little conversation."

Suzuki drew her attention away from admiring the mural in the kitchen, her eyes landing on Jack and lingering there a moment too long for her taste. She swore the woman gave him a full once over.

" _Actually_ , before anyone has anything to say, I think an apology is in order."

Shock flew through when the sharp brown eyes turned towards her, the lighting of the house illuminating the rich dark tones of Suzuki's hair.

"What in the fuck do I have to apologize to-" she started, bristling at the suggestion before she was cut off.

"No, no, you misunderstand me. I need to apologize to you. The way I acted in India was uncalled for. Just instinct for me to distrust outsiders. And I'm sorry for calling you a tart on the phone. That was...distasteful of me."

The apology was rather out of the blue, but it made her feel a little less like strangling Suzuki. At least, for  _those_  transgressions. She still had the interruption to answer for.

"Honestly, I'm confused as to why it is that I'm still alive," she continued, twitching her head in Jack's direction, who only smirked against the crystal tumbler of rum he had in his hand. "I had always thought that in the incredibly unlikely circumstance of Jack Sparrow falling in love, an army wouldn't have a chance of harming  _that_ lucky woman. Which is  _you_ , apparently."

"I can fix the being alive thing if you want," Jack said from where he was lounging on his black leather sofa next to Ringa, like the  _King_  that he was. "Wouldn't take more than a quick bullet. Could probably do it with my eyes closed at this range."

"He's not lying you know," Chris remarked, idly playing with his pocket knife.

"I'm  _sure_."

She seemed sincere, sincere enough at least, but the way she had been looking at Jack, like she was  _interested_ in him was making the little ugly sparks of jealousy creep up into her head, only calmed for now by catching Jack's eyes from where she was standing.

"Not that I claim to own Jack as my property, but I  _am_  the woman he loves." She said it in such a way that the word ' _only_ ' was there silently. She was  _marking_ her territory.

Suzuki inclined her head with a small nod, a sign of respect, while Jack's eyes sparkled with warmth at her from across the room, a silent ' _you are indeed_ ' communicated between them, then his mouth curved into a smirk  _again_ , and he knew he was remembering her physical frustration. Damn the man and his ability to infuriate and charm her at the same time so succinctly. She clenched her thighs together, raising her eyes to the ceiling, praying that she could make it until Suzuki left.

The Asian woman sat down in the living room with the rest of them. She sat next to Jack, and it was all she could do to not sit  _on_  Jack, in a decidedly less clothed state of being. So far, Jack had handled all of the dialogue between Suzuki are their side, but when he gave her a small nudge, she realized that he meant for her to take the lead on this one.

And take the lead she would.

"In the interest of making sure we are able to wash our hands of this job thoroughly, I think we ought to know a little more about  _why_  it is that you needed this evidence so badly. Surely the  _property_  that was taken from you is of considerable value-"

" _Why_ , thinking of stealing it, were you?"

Just before she could formulate a response, Jack snuck another nudge, a  _caress_  more like, over the skin peeking out on her back between her black PJ trousers and her t-shirt. The infuriating man meant to  _tease_  her, as though he didn't know that at the moment, she was a lion who was being made to walk around a steaming hot piece of red meat while simultaneously being told she couldn't eat it.

Choosing to ignore him for the moment, she focused on Suzuki's remark, ignoring the snickering that the other three were doing too, especially ignoring the knowing glances Ringa kept sending her.

"Do you have a problem with what I choose to occupy my time with?"

An appreciative expression crossed Suzuki's face, as though she was  _enjoying_  this interaction.

"No, certainly not. The item stolen from me was something I was supposed to protect, requested to by a Cartel family. The father of the family has been causing too many problems, and  _so_ , this item was possessed until he chose to reevaluate his actions. The father asked me to retrieve it, and then Arturo gave me the task of retrieving the evidence, with the item as a reward."

"And the  _item_? What is it?"

She was certainly not going to allow Suzuki to omit anything.

"The father's personal handgun. Normally it wouldn't be that big of a deal, but the gun has the family vault code engraved on it. Arturo was not aware of this, fortunately. He thought taking the gun as punishment was just a minor inconvenience."

"And now that you have the box, the family will get the gun back, you will go back to killing people, and we'll be finished?"

"Hai,  _yes_. You'll be finished."

She rose from the couch, crossing the room to collect the box, and the rush of anticipation hit her like a sledgehammer.  _Just leave_. Take the stupid box and  _leave._

"...Suzuki," came Jack's voice from next to her. The woman turned with the distinct air that she had been trying to avoid whatever Jack was about to say.

"Nani? What?"

"I don't want to find out you're lying. If any of this comes back around to us…"

He left the threat open ended, letting her imagine the consequences, but Chris whispered ' _Japanese barbecue'_ under his breath, followed by Shawn's ' _main course of Suzuki_ ', making Jack  _barely_  twitch with laughter.

"I understand. You're free from the job. Thank you.  _Arigato_."

It only took a second for her to go from the kitchen table to the front door, but it felt like a lifetime.

"Thank  _fuck_ ," Chris said once the door was closed. "This clusterfuck of a job is over. Shawn and I were thinking about organizing a race. Wanna join?"

"And who's car do you suppose you're gonna drive?" Jack asked, looking around at him with a raised eyebrow.

To be quite fucking honest, she didn't particularly give a shit about any races, and Jack must know it with the twitching and squirming she was doing. She felt like she was on  _fucking_ fire.

"Well, we figured that you would be driving that shiny new McLaren. See what it can really do."

But Jack was already standing, her standing with him, clutching his hand, pushing him in the direction of the bedroom with small nudges. He threw some kind of reply at Chris before tugging at her hand, and she knew then and there that he had been as tortured as her since. The walk from the couch to the bedroom door felt like an eternity as her anticipation mounted, making her feel like a caged animal with the key to the door dangling just out of reach.

* * *

By the time they reached the bedroom, his name fell from her lips in a breathless moan, and she saw his hand trembling when he twisted the handle. Even before the door clicked shut, his hands were clutching her hips, squeezing, pushing her back against the wall, his body pressing against hers, the heat coming from it making her head swim, the only light from the room, the lamp on the nightstand, casting a warm soft glow around them.

"... _Fuck_ , do you have any  _fucking idea_..." came his voice, so ragged and aroused already against the skin of her neck as he dragged his lips across it, the velvety timbre making her core clench in a rush. "I thought I was going to die waiting," was her breathless reply, mixed with a minxy laugh, her voice heavy with desire.

His lips felt like sin against her as he sucked the skin just below her ear into his mouth, laving his tongue around it, sinking his teeth in, then soothing the bite marks with wet strokes while she dove her hands under his shirt, smoothing her fingers over the heated skin she found, lean muscle undulating with each uneven breath he took.

"I hate making you wait," and her knees nearly buckled at that, at his insistence for bringing her pleasure, making the ache between her legs almost painful, a delicious throbbing only increased when his face resurfaced, inching closer, a wicked grin spreading across his mouth. "I wonder how wet you are," and his hand worked itself to her, rubbing her through her clothes, her hips grinding against him.

"I don't have to wonder about you," she managed to reply, glancing down at the bulge in his trousers, reaching her hand, stroking across it through the rough fabric, earning her a hiss as he reached down to press her hand harder against himself, his mouth slanting over hers at the same time, his tongue slipping inside. "You're so hard," she whispered when he broke away for a second, a velvety snicker entering her mouth when he attached his lips to hers again, snatching her control over her body with each stroke of his fingers below. He thrust his hips against her hand, making it clear what it was that he wanted.

She wasted no time undoing the button of the black cargo shorts that he had dragged on, pulling the zipper down with shaking fingers, her hands flying to his hips to push them down, off of his body, the need to touch him destroying any other thought. When they hit the floor, she yanked his boxers down with a triumphant breath, her hips bucking against his hand when his cock sprang free.  _God_ , he was hard, harder than she had seen him in a long time, and she discovered that she might have said so out loud because he broke away from her mouth to give her a growl against her cheek, mixed with a delirious little laugh. "...It's all for you love…only for you..."

He was cut off when she took him in her hand and reversed them so that his back was against the wall, shoving him a little harder than necessary, and smirked when his head tilted back as she sidled up to him, pressing her stomach against his erection, leaning up to tease him. "What something,  _Captain_?" she asked, wrapping her fingers around him, squeezing lightly, retracting to explore the ridges of his thick length, trailing her finger up the throbbing vein on the underside, stroking the tip with her thumb. The power that she held in her hand sent heat washing over her with each breath she took.

It was so mind-numbing that she could reduce him to a quivering mass of need against a wall, that she could make his walls crumble until all he wanted, all he could think about was  _her_ , and what she was doing to him. She also loved that he never hesitated to tell her exactly what he wanted, never tried to dance around it, never shied away from it.

"I want your mouth wrapped around me," was his reply, barely discernible through the huskiness of his voice, and then his words broke off into a strangled growl when she immediately sank to her knees, his cock standing proudly in front of her, begging for attention. Curling her hands around his hips, she leaned forward to tease her tongue from the base to the tip in one long wet stroke. " _Christ_ , damn  _tease_."

She looked up to find him watching her, his dark eyes glittering with the light from the lamp, his lips parted, heavy breaths being pushed through them. "I could always  _stop_ ," she said, a smirk appearing on the edge of the last word.

"No, you couldn't, Lizzie. You  _enjoy_  having me in your mouth too much for that, and I love you for it."

His hands smoothed through her hair as he smiled down at her with a roguish charm, but she wasn't  _done_  yet, wasn't going to let him win this little battle quite that easily. "Mmm, I do. All hot and hard, and  _so thick_ , all for  _me_. You're intoxicating." Each chunk of words was punctuated by another stroke of her tongue, and another hiss from him. She wanted him completely unraveled by the time she took him in her mouth.

"You love the way my tongue feels, don't you? The way it strokes-" A devilish laugh rumbled in his chest, making her stop to watch him as he crumbled even more, his hands tightening in her hair. "Trying to make me lose it again, hmm? That is a dangerous game to play, darling."

"Ahh, but it's so  _fun_ ," and then she did take him in, only the tip, swirling her tongue around it, sucking  _just_  on this side of too hard, before sinking her mouth down him as slowly as she could, holding him in place with her hands on his hips. The moan that came from him could make even a nun throw open her legs for him because  _god_  he sounded beautiful. She kept him buried, twitching the tip of her tongue around him, sucking, and then the hands that were tangled in her hair pulled just slightly, and she laughed, letting the sound vibrate onto him as she pulled back all the way to the tip, stroking back down.

His hands flexed against her head as she worked him, tightening her mouth, moaning around him, then finally he dug his fingers into her hair and quickened her rhythm himself, and she let him, delighting at him taking control, at his gorgeous voice whispering blistering things, until he stopped, lifting her off of him, his chest heaving.

" _Too_  much?" she asked, kissing her way up his stomach, giving him little love bites, smoothing her hands up his sides as she stood, stopping to take a nipple in her mouth, earning her a whimper.

" _Never_  love, but I seem to remember you nearly dying with frustration, and I  _know_  you aren't faring any better now. Let's find out, shall we?"

She didn't have time to giggle as he pushed her back against the wall, dragging her trousers down her legs, exposing her to his hungry gaze. He curled his hand around her arse, lifting her and attacking her mouth with his at the same time. Strong arms slid around her as her legs wrapped around his waist, the hard surface of the wall disappearing as she was carried away from it. Her shirt was tugged off of her, thrown somewhere, and the soft surface of the bed was the next thing she knew as she was tossed there, Jack covering her body with his immediately, crushing her mouth with another kiss, his tongue leaving no corner of her unexplored.

His cock slid against her wet heat in a torturous motion, and she undulated, trying to get him inside, but he evidently had other plans. "No, darling, not  _yet_."

"Damn  _tease_ ," she mewled, throwing his words back at him.

"Peas in a pod, love," he said as he lowered his head to take a nipple into his mouth, nipping at her, flicking his tongue against the peak, his other hand kneading her left breast, then abandoning it to sink lower, across her flat stomach, over her thigh, inching  _closer_ , then his fingers found her center, dipping in, spreading the wetness around.

"You're fucking  _dripping_ ," he growled against her skin, making her buck against him. She reached down a hand to feel for herself, brushing his hand there as he stroked her, squeezing one of his fingers in appreciation before wrapping her entire hand around his. "It's all for you love," she said, mimicking him with a soft smile on her face. He leaned up to kiss her tenderly, sliding his fingers all the way inside below, moving them in a steady rhythm.

" _Amazing_ ," was all he said, placing soft kisses on her jawline as she clenched her legs around his arm from the sensations that he was creating, her body jumping when his thumb found her clit, circling around it slowly. A sudden need to have him bare before her had her free hand dragging his shirt up and over his head, winning an amused chuckle from him as his raven hair fell around his shoulders, mussed from their activities. "I love the way you sound when I touch you," he whispered. "So  _free_."

"I have nothing... _oh_...nothing to hide from you."

And she didn't. She had heard of some women being embarrassed about being loud, but she rather thought that it was the wrong choice in men that brought about their hesitancy. There wasn't any part of her that felt like she had to hold back with Jack, or hide her pleasure, and it was the most beautiful feeling to completely let go with him, to feel so uninhibited, because it allowed her to quite suddenly tighten her hand around his to stop his movements, a gesture that he knew all too well. "Something you need, love?" but the damned man, of course, knew what she needed.

"...Your  _mouth_...tongue…" The words came out more as sounds formed by only breath rather than her vocal chords. He grinned at her as he kissed down her body, stopping to take her nipple into his mouth again, then traveling down her stomach, pausing to mark her skin with little nibbles, before arriving at her core. She kept her legs closed only because one of her favorite things in the world was watching him spread them to look at her. The heat in his eyes always made her feel so  _powerful_.

His hands curled around her thighs as he gently parted them, a breath of  _awe_ coming out of his mouth as he gazed upon her.

"See something you like, love?" she asked him, finally understanding why he used the endearment so much. It rolled off the tongue so perfectly, and calling him  _love_  did strange mushy warm things to her insides. "You're so damn  _pretty_ here," he whispered, trailing a teasing finger around her center without actually touching it. "Perfectly pink, so soft, and when you're  _this_ wet for me, you have no idea..." he trailed off, before finding his voice again. " _Mine_ ," he said, his hand covering her. But it wasn't possessive, it was said more like he didn't quite believe it, like he was still trying to convince himself that the world had aligned in such a way to allow them to be here, doing  _this_ , as a couple,  _together_.

"Yours, Jack.  _Only_  yours." Her words brought a soft smile to his face, free of any mischief or taunting, just simply  _happy_.

Then he leaned forward and flicked his tongue across her clit, and she nearly floated off the bed, her hands coming down to grasp each side of his head, threading through his hair as he applied his mouth in earnest, spreading her open with two fingers to dip his tongue inside her, before dragging it back up to her clit, his fingers sinking deep inside, curling up to massage her there as he worked magic with his mouth.

"...yes yes  _yes…_ " was all she could formulate as she climbed, her hips pulsing against him, breathy moans spilling from her throat each time that tell tale heat flashed in her loins. She loved when he did this, not necessarily because it felt good, at least not  _just_ that, but because he was always so attentive. The amount of focus he put into each response of her body, the nuances he employed, a different angle on a certain flick of his tongue, different speeds of his fingers, oh  _god_ , it was like he was playing a complex instrument that he had mastered, driving her higher and higher into oblivion.

"... _Jack...almost there…_ " and then she held his head there to make sure he wasn't going to stop, make sure he was going to finish it, and it won her a devilish chuckle when he did pull away for a second. "Even I'm not quite that evil, darling."

"... _at least...oh god...at least…_ " She couldn't finish her sentence, couldn't process words right at that moment, because he had sucked her clit into his mouth, was humming against it, swirling his tongue, and it was just all so  _much_. Her hips were bucking uncontrollably, at one point she might have pulled her own hair but she wasn't sure, and then without warning it struck, streaking out from her clit as though she had been hit with a whip made of fire, traveling through her entire body in vicious waves, and she might have said Jack's name once or a million times, or she might have said nothing, or some nonsense, but she didn't know that either because the buzzing, the  _roaring_ , in her ears rendered her senseless to anything besides the pleasure.

When she finally did start to float back down, when her chest stopped heaving as though she had sprinted from one end of England to the other, the only thing she could think to do was finish what she had been trying to say earlier.

"At least not all the time is what I was  _trying_  to say," but it came out as a whisper, as though her voice had been stolen by his mouth. "Sometimes you do stop just before, and-"

"Ah, but darling," and she discovered that he was draped across her body again when his voice vibrated against the skin of her neck; when had that happened? "Like I always say, it's better in the end if you can handle delaying it."

The sudden urge to just  _look_  at him gripped her. She nudged her shoulder up, and he raised his head. "Hmm?" came out in half protest and half curiosity.

'I just wanted to see your face," and then her finger was caressing his cheek seemingly of its own volition, trailing over his perfect cheekbones, over his perfectly angled forehead, across his jawline, dancing over the skin just above his eyes, before arriving to trace his lips. It had taken her a little while to get used to seeing his forehead once the bandanna had finally come off, and it had amused him to no end to find her staring at it randomly. "What's so special about my face?"

It was a question that had a million answers and none at all at the same time. The many different expressions his face could have, the way his jaw tightened when he was angry, the way everything about his face darkened when he was angry, or the way that he could soften his face so perfectly when he looked at her, or the way his eyes still crinkled just a little bit when he laughed, or his beautiful smile, or his saucy grin... _everything_  about his face was so alluring, so hypnotizing. "It's yours, and I have a little bit of time to look at it, because it's also  _mine_ , so…"

The rest of the sentence trailed off, the meaning hanging in the air without needing to be said. "My face is yours?" came his teasing reply.

" _Jack_ , all of you is mine... _oh_ …"

He had just reached down without her paying attention to place the tip of his cock at her entrance, and was now sliding it up and down gently. All she could do was nod, reminded of her aching need for him so much that the ache surprised her with how swiftly it made itself known.

He rocked forwards, entering her with just the first few inches, then stopped, and she opened her eyes, not realizing that she had closed them in the first place.

"What-"

"I wanted to say something... _that_... _well,_  I'm not very good at mushy things-"

Her heart fluttered, and she reached up to cup the side of his face. "Just say it, love." He hesitated for a second longer, leaning down to kiss her first.

"You and I, we... _this_ , is stronger than any stupid argument, or separation, or  _anything_. We have something so... _pure_...that...I think we were always together, at least  _here_ ," he stopped to tap on her chest above her heart. "It just took us a little while to wake up."

It made her forget for a second that they were about to make love, it made all of the bad shit disappear, anything that might have been clouding her mind,  _vanished_. "Oh,  _Jack…_ "

"I love you... _more_... _more_  than anything, and  _this_ ," he took her hand and placed it on his chest above  _his_ heart, "has always been yours, and will  _always_  be yours."

Any reaction she might have had, any response that she might have managed to formulate, not that she believed she  _could_  formulate a response, was chased away when he sank inside of her to the hilt, trapping her breath in her chest before she could exhale. "Oh god... _every time_ …"

Every time...this was something that language couldn't describe, having him inside of her. It went beyond the physical realm, into something else entirely, something that made her ascend into a realm that could only be called paradise. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and he circled one arm under her shoulders to cradle her body, his hand burying itself in her hair. Something was lit within her, some gentle flame when he started to thrust. He kept his pace tender, his right hand massaging her hip, his lips covering her own in such a sweet kiss that it made her stomach clench with emotion.

Oh god, nothing could be better than this, than being  _his_ , being together, being loved by him, loving him, it was all she would ever need, and then some, and as she trailed her hands down his back, feeling the muscles working, she felt so damn  _lucky_  that he was  _hers_.

"You're right I think," she whispered against his cheek. "I think we are...almost  _fated_ , in a way, to be together." His hand closed around her breast, softly squeezing it.

"I'm right about most things, darling," but his voice didn't hold his usual arrogant teasing, only a breathlessness, a complete abandoning of any song and dance, a tone that was a little rough around the edges with pleasure. She tightened her legs around him a little harder than normal, and his movements faltered, earning her a curious twinkle in his eyes. A few seconds ticked by, and she didn't even have to say anything for him to understand.

He withdrew from her and moved to sit against the headboard, smiling at her as she straddled him, reaching down to place him at her entrance again, then sinking down slowly, watching his reaction, feeling his hips start to thrust.

" _No_ ," she said softly, her hand holding him down. " _Just me_." She even decided to lace her fingers with his, trapping his hands against the mattress. It wasn't often that she tapped into her more dominating side, but when she did, it drove him absolutely  _wild_. Her hips rose, until just the tip of him was still inside of her, then fell slowly, a rough moan spilling from her. He always felt so  _big_  this way, filled her so perfectly, which apparently she also said out loud without realizing it, because he chuckled, smiling at her, a kind of wonder in his eyes.

She kept her pace slow, wanting to see how far she could take it before  _he_ couldn't take it. His self-control was a marvelous thing, but like everything, it had its weaknesses, this being one of them. "You really love making me crazy, don't you?" he asked, not even twitching his hands. He was trying to prove that he could handle it, but he was  _wrong_ , so  _wrong_.

"You know I do. I love the way you feel-" she smoothed her hands up his chest, playing with his nipples as she rose and fell on his length, "and I love you being like this, just letting yourself be loved by me. For a person like you, placing that kind of trust in someone is so unlikely, and doing it for me is the most precious thing…"

The words jumbled in her throat when the heat inside of her core became overwhelming as it slithered into the rest of her body, but she knew she was going to need  _more_. Releasing his hands, he sighed gratefully when he was able to curl them around her hips, moving her a little faster, before tugging her body to him, circling his arms around her back. She did the same thing, clutching at his shoulders, kissing them softly, smiling when one of his hands found its way into her hair again.

" _More_...I need  _more_ ," and then he was rolling them and dragging her legs to lock high around his waist, crushing her mouth with his, letting go of all the pent up tension she had been stirring within him since they had gotten in the bedroom, his thrusts becoming sharp,  _hard_ , a beautiful contrast to the way he was cradling her upper body so tenderly. Something that sounded like his name spilled out of her, but she wasn't sure, couldn't think past the way his hips were meeting hers, increasing in speed with each cry that left her mouth, until she couldn't  _breathe_ , didn't even remember what breathing was. All that mattered was finding that glorious release, all that mattered was the noises he was making, all that mattered was the weight of his body on hers, how  _safe_ she felt, then it all crystallized, and her body surged against him, a scream torn from her throat at the power of her orgasm, sending her to heights that she couldn't comprehend, couldn't…

She was still floating high, still there, when he growled her name in his moment of release, and she clutched him against her, held his body to hers when he shuddered, coming hard with several rough jerks of his hips, before stilling to ride out the rest of his orgasm, his arms holding her tightly as the last few shocks of pleasure left him. Him being that undone, that  _raw_  emotionally, was so  _intoxicating_  to her.

His heartbeat was frantic against her chest as he kept holding her, as though he was afraid she would fade away if he let go, but she didn't mind, would never mind,  _loved_  when he stayed on top of her, stayed inside of her, for as long as possible after they both finished.

There was no chuckle this time, no teasing, just a breathless " _I love you_ " whispered into her ear, and then he lifted his head to stare down at her.

'I love you too," she whispered back, smoothing some of the hair away from his face, just before he leaned down to give her a toe-curling kiss, then slipping out of her to roll over, gathering her in his arms.

Nothing needed to be said between them in that moment, as all they needed was each other, just there, in the silence of the room, and they both fell asleep to the sound of their own breathing, both feeling a sense of  _peace_.


	18. Black Hole

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 18! Hope everyone enjoys this one! :)

September 15th, Tuesday Morning, 5 AM

* * *

 

The perfect time of day was right in the morning when the sun is just starting to breach the horizon, when the air is still crisp, when the birds are starting to sing, and when the rest of the world is quiet.

She hadn't moved since she had woken up with a startled inhale, not for any particular reason. There might have been a dream that she had left, but she couldn't remember. And it wasn't that she didn't want to move, because she wanted to shift just to the left very much.

Currently, she had the love of her life cradled against her, and she didn't have the heart to wake him yet. His head was resting on her chest, and his arm was draped across her ribs. A few strands of black raven hair were tickling her nose every time she exhaled, but she still couldn't bring herself to even wiggle a little bit. Her right arm was trapped between them, but that was fine because his skin was warm against hers.

The first time that they had slept together in the same bed, Jack had come very close to embedding the small dagger he kept under his pillow into her skin but had gotten himself under control just in time. It had taken him a few minutes to even talk to her because he had felt so ashamed of himself, but once she convinced him that he had nothing to be ashamed  _of_ , she had correctly guessed that she was the first person to sleep with him in the same bed. Trust wasn't something that came easily, and in his experience, someone even being  _near_  his bed while he was sleeping meant that they wanted to harm him.

* * *

_An indescribable warmth was being exuded from her, but she couldn't tell if it was actual heat coming from her skin or just the physical manifestation of the happiness that she currently felt, so much so that just thinking about what had happened the night before sent overwhelming emotion coursing through her body._

_After so much waiting, so many obstacles, she had finally made love to Jack, which seemed too simple of language to describe it, describe the heights he had taken her to, the complete abandon he had brought her just by being inside of her._

_Inhaling deeply, she tried to clear her mind, tried to focus on the sight in front of her rather than just re-living how his body had felt atop her, how perfectly they had fit together, and the litany of words he had breathed onto her skin as he took her._

_The sight in front of her being her pirate captain fast asleep, the blanket only covering the lower half of his tanned form, and it was barely covering him there, riding a little lower with every breath he took. She had never thought she would get the opportunity to touch more than she already had before yesterday, nevermind being able to watch him as he slept, leisurely examining every perfect feature of his body, completely bare for her gaze._

_It wasn't quite accurate to call him hers, she knew, with their complicated relationship still creating quite the divide between now and that far off step in their dynamic, but she would be damned if she didn't wish him to be hers with every fiber of her being._

_Before she realized what she was doing, she had scooted forwards a little to sit right next to him, trailing her fingers over the skin right next to the blanket edge, dipping her fingers into the v of his hip that was just peeking out from under the cloth, before running them up his side. God, he was beautiful, and she was fairly confident that he was the only man she had ever seen that deserved being called beautiful, with his bronzed skin, his raven black hair, his lean muscle from years of sailing, his hands that could bring her so much pleasure, whether they were dancing across her heated flesh or just massaging her skin as he pulled her against him._

_The tattoos and scars only deepened the complexity of him, only made her fascination with him increase tenfold, because there was a story behind each one, and even besides that, she found all of them beautiful too._

_And his face. She couldn't find enough worthy words in the English language to describe his face. She knew that it didn't belong on a clever pirate, she knew that for sure, but the fact that it adorned a clever pirate such as Jack, combined with everything else that was laid out in front of her eyes, made her feel so damn_ lucky _that she was sitting where she was sitting in that moment._

_Leaning upwards, she gingerly touched her mouth to his chest just above the two bullet wounds, kissing him softly there in random places, winding her other arm around him. She felt him shift but didn't think much of it, figured he was still sleeping, and continued exploring his skin with her lips._

_When he suddenly tensed, going taut as a bowstring, she only had a second to prepare for it before he was shoving her off of him, then rolling on top of her with something cold pressing into her neck. Adrenaline made it difficult to think past the sudden trembling her body was doing, but she managed to squeak out a strangled 'Jack', fear gripping her heart despite it being him._

_His weight disappeared as quickly as it had covered her, and her hand flew up to rub at the skin of her neck while she tried to control her heaving chest, tried to calm her breathing down. After she thought she had returned enough to her senses to suss out what exactly had just taken place, she turned to find him sitting like a statue at the edge of the bed, his long black hair hanging down his back. A small dagger was balanced on the sheets to his right._

_Reaching for him even before she moved closer, her hand came to rest on his shoulder as the rest of her caught up. "Jack?"_

_She wasn't sure if she expected a response or not, but when his head jerked back and forth, her heart broke a little bit. "Jack, please turn around and look at me."_

_It took her gently kneading his shoulder, her other hand settling on his hip, and her repeating 'please come back to me' for him to finally obey her, and he turned as though he was meeting a great resistance, coming to sit against the wall, regarding her with an uncertainty that she wanted to chase away._

_Taking his hand in hers, playing with his fingers, she began her plan of convincing him that he could trust her. "You've never...slept with anyone else before, have you? In the same bed, I mean."_

_He only shook his head, still refusing to relax."Jack, I'm not angry, not even close to being angry with you-"_

" _I could have killed you, love. Do you understand that? Had I not realized...had I not realized it was you as quickly as I did, I could have killed you."_

_She hadn't expected him to talk so soon, but the fact that he did, and that he had said what he said made her understand exactly how bothered he was by it. Scooting forwards to climb into his lap, straddling him, she cupped his cheek, stroking her thumb over the skin there. "Stop blaming yourself right now. First of all, that reaction was completely out of your control. Second, you retreated almost faster than you reacted, which leads me to believe that you had more control over yourself than you give yourself credit for. Third, we were clearly far too gone last night to actually think about the consequences that…"_

_Pausing to consider her words, thinking about how to actually put it, she continued tentatively. "That reaction to me is only natural for you. The only unfortunate bit is that it was me and not an enemy. If you really want to assign blame, then it's both of our faults, but I still say we had no faculties to think about the fact that you slept with a knife under your pillow and that you might not appreciate being touched while you slept. This was just an unfortunate circumstance."_

_Her tone was final, and she hoped that he would understand that she really meant what she was saying, that she didn't blame him in the slightest, that she wasn't angry. Before he could say anything in response, she leaned forward and met his mouth with hers, kissing him tenderly, hoping to relax him where words had failed. It was working, she realized, as his body lost its tension, his hands bunching in her hair to pull her closer to him, kissing her back._

" _How…" he started when he gently thrust his face forward, breaking the kiss. "How are we going to get around this? I'm not going to suddenly stop being cautious of people looking to kill me in my sleep…"_

_That made her really think because she desperately wanted to continue sleeping next to him, but she didn't want to cause him any more stress over pulling knives on her. "Maybe...put the knife somewhere else? Or...leave it in your breeches. Just bundle it up in them and put them next to the bed on the floor. That way they are close enough, but not close enough for...that."_

_He was nodding slowly as he considered her solution, before finally allowing a slow smile to spread across his mouth. "Alright, love," and then she turned to put the knife on the floor for him, before following him back under the blanket, snuggling against him, falling back asleep before she could even be reminded of how tired she actually was._

* * *

So, having him using her as a pillow was not something that she took lightly, and it warmed her heart that he trusted her so completely now. She just hoped that the conversation that she planned on having with him didn't upset...didn't  _warp_ their relationship. It might have been the thing that had woken her up, even. The constant buzzing of questions and unresolved issues, abandoned after they had fights, the abandoning that they did to each other...it needed to be talked about, and it was scaring her.

Her heart had been alternating between a normal rhythm during the few moments that she had convinced herself that it would go fine, that they could get through it all without revisiting old arguments, or that they could avoid getting offended by the other, and an almost tachycardic rhythm when her mind made up worst-case scenarios about the whole thing.

She managed to free her arm from between them without waking him using careful precision, and snuck her hand into his hair, enjoying the thick texture of it, stroking her thumb across his hairline for a moment.

Now that the job was hopefully over, they  _needed_  to make sense of their separation, otherwise, it was going to turn into a black hole of potential fights.

Sighing, she sat up, causing Jack to roll back over to his pillow, making an adorable little noise of protest, which she squashed when she leaned over him to kiss his forehead, his face transforming from a disgruntled expression to content, a sleepy smile making the corners of his mouth curve up. She continued kissing him, down the side of his face, around his mouth, across his jaw, down his neck and then resigned herself to waking him up fully. If they were going to talk about this, it needed to be before anyone else was awake so they wouldn't be disturbed.

" _Love_ ," she whispered against his cheek, reaching down to dance her fingers across his ribs and onto the side of his stomach. He made another noise of protest, twitching his head in what she supposed was  _no_. "Time to get up."

He said something that sounded like ' _it's bloody not even daylight yet, shut up_ ', but it was a bit jumbled, slurred with half-sleep. "Jack,  _please_  wake up," she tried, smiling softly when his eyes opened just a fraction. Leaning down to give him a soft kiss, he responded, his arms coming up around her to pull her closer.

"Hey,  _sleepy_ ," she said when she broke away to find him almost fully awake now, staring at her curiously. "Lizzie, it's," he paused to lean over to look at the clock, "five in the morning."

"I'm aware of what time it is. I  _can_  tell time, you know."

His hand came up to brush some hair away from her face. "Why are you awake?"

Briefly, she considered forgoing the entire conversation, because perhaps it would be  _easier_ to live in ignorance, but then reminded herself that ignoring it would only lead to worse things.

"We need to talk."

A quirk of his eyebrow and another glance at the clock told her that he was just a little bit confused.

"At  _five_  in the morning?"

He must have seen the doubt cross her face, the immediate retreat, because he sighed and sat up, rubbing his face in defeat, while she scooted back a little bit to sit cross-legged next to him.. "What...what did you want to talk about?"

It took her a moment to summon the right thing to say, then she found that she didn't know the right thing to say, so she reverted to trying to explain herself, trying to smooth the way.

"I'm  _sorry_  for bringing-"

His hands immediately grabbed hers, squeezing them as he made eye contact with her. "No apologizing. Just say whatever you want to say."

"You're not going to like-"

He cut her off again with a sharp jerk of his head. "I don't give a shit about whether I'm going to like it or not. It won't do any good to keep it inside of your head, love."

Searching his face for any reason to doubt what he said, she finally nodded, taking a deep breath. "Now that we are free from this job, I wanted to talk about the...our separation. It's just too big of a thing to try and ignore it."

He sighed, playing with her fingers. "I thought that might be it. You're right though, we do need to talk about it. I've been trying to avoid it, hoped you had forgotten most of it, even though I hadn't, but obviously that was a lost cause."

She had thought about  _how_ , how they might approach the subject, and she had decided that it would be easiest if they each talked through it from their own perspective, one at a time.

"I thought it would be easiest if we...both told our versions separately, one at a time, answering any questions, obviously."

They were both aware, she knew, that this  _could_  turn into an argument, that they really had no idea what this conversation was going to do, but the fact that he was willing to have it anyway, that  _she_  was willing to have it anyway, told her that there was no turning back now.

"...Alright, love," he sighed. "Do you want to go first, or do you want me to go first?"

"I...I can. Don't be afraid to cut in with questions if you have any."

The blanket was sending little shudders through her every time her nail grazed it as she picked at it.

"Why are you so beautiful?"

Her head snapped up in confusion. "What?"

"You said to ask you questions. I asked one."

Lightening the mood, chasing away her nervousness, reminding her that he wasn't going anywhere regardless of what happened, they were all things that could describe what that  _question_  was trying to do.

"I don't know. My atoms aligned in such a way that I ended up looking like this, along with my genes. It's just science, really."

A warm chuckle bubbled out of him, and she realized he was trying to erase some of the tension from himself too.

"Well, thank  _fuck_  for science then. And...actually, I'll go first. I've done the least amount of talking about it, so..."

It was true. All three times that it had been brought up, she had been the one to initiate the conversation.

He cleared his throat, focusing on something else in the room for a moment, and she let him gather himself, let him work through whatever it was that was going on in his head, while she memorized the lines on his dragon tattoo, dreading what she knew he was going to bring up first, because it was the same thing that she had been trying so goddamn hard not to think about since Mumbai. It was the same thing that she had spent the last four decades of her life trying not to think about, failing spectacularly most of the time. It had haunted her and had threaded its claws through every other thought she had, every memory, and every theory or explanation or  _anything_  that she had involving Jack.

Thoughts about it had flashed through, during her ruminating just before she had questioned Jack about the prison sentence, even before then, in the hotel in Mumbai, on the airplane ride, but she had fiercely shoved the memory back down where it belonged then, unwilling to think about it, content to bask in the suddenness of having him back, in the complete ignorance of the manner of their separation.

' _Fights between her and Jack flitted around, disagreements that they had never resolved…'_

Fights. For the longest time, any fight they had was always about something that wasn't personal. They fought about Brethren decisions, ship issues, where one of them was going to go, where one of them wasn't going to go, job issues, anything that didn't get personal.

Until that week.

A terrible mixture of a lack of sleep from the week before, maybe a total of seven hours, stress from the current job, the fact that she hadn't told Jack why she was really there, and the injury Jack had at the time turned what would have been a normal argument into something that tore at her heart, even now.

They had both said things, such  _awful_  things…

Even the day before that bout of ruminating…

' _Had she really hurt him that much by turning him in? Or was it something else she had done? Was she really that expendable to him? How much did she know about him really? Was she just assuming that he truly cared for her? Was it just a facade that he put on?'_

Of course, she had hurt him that bad, but not because of the police, not because of that, but she hadn't been able to bring herself to think about the week before...the thought banished immediately as soon as it had come.

' _Why the fuck had it been that long? Nothing fueled the fire of her rumination quite like the man she loved vanishing from her orbit for almost half a century.'_

The thought that she had banished immediately again after that had been that maybe if she had just told him...maybe if she had just...if they hadn't said the things they said, if they had...a hundred 'ifs'...a hundred times that  _that_ argument had inserted itself into her rumination that day, but she had tried her damnedest to ignore it, to focus on something else...the fact that Jack had kept his prison time from her had made a convenient clutch to avoid talking about the  _real_ reason that had led to her making one of the most ridiculous and impulsive decisions of her life.

They had been in London for two weeks. It had been a standard theft job, a standard bank heist to be more specific, but that wasn't the reason  _she_ was there. She was there to steal a car, and to this day she couldn't fathom why she hadn't just  _told_ Jack that she wanted to steal a car.

That wasn't even the thing she regretted not telling him sooner. Not even close to the massive secret she had kept from him for that week in hell. Really a secret that she had been keeping from herself for all of those years, despite her knowing,  _knowing_  the truth. She had just been too scared to get confirmation, to have concrete proof of it.

In her endless denial, she figured that they had just kept getting lucky. Careless is what they really were, most of the time, but something in her brain just wouldn't let her believe the truth.

Until that week.

Until she had enough of the wondering, enough of the constant worry in the back of her mind, enough of the entire problem.

Without telling Jack, which was her first mistake, and the mistake that cost her for 44 years, she had made a clinic appointment for that Monday, early in the morning. Jack had been passed out on the motel bed on pain medication, quaaludes, which was a rare occurrence. Generally, he had always refused to take painkillers. He had a high pain tolerance, at least, that is what he had always told her. It was from the car accident in '72. The accident had happened in mid-December, and his arm had bothered him all the way to mid-January of '73. Getting a large chunk of glass nearly coming out the other side of your arm will fuck with you for awhile.

So, without waking him up, she had slipped out of bed, dressed, and headed to the clinic. The appointment had involved a lot more than she had been prepared for. The physician had practically interrogated her about her sex life, her eating habits, her exercise habits, her menstrual cycle, medical history, lifestyle, and then they had conducted a very thorough physical exam of her.

She  _knew_ , knew the truth before she had even stepped foot in the building, but when the doctor had finished all of his tests, exams, questions, and anything else he could think of to bother her with, he had come into the room with a solemn look on his face and had explained to her that it was incredibly likely that she was unable to have children.

_Infertile._

The bloody fountain had given her eternal life by taking away her ability to make life.

That awful word had stuck itself into her brain for the entire day, torturing her, and it had merged with all of her anxiety about Jack, about their relationship, or lack of one, and something in her had decided that she couldn't tell him, that she couldn't handle his reaction if he was indifferent, or not understanding, or whatever other negative reaction he may have had.

The plan of secrecy would have worked if she hadn't been so fucking tired. If she hadn't left the motel room for a second with the stupid hospital bracelet sitting on the nightstand.

When she had walked back in, Jack was sitting on the bed, still groggy from the medication, holding it up to her like it was the final piece of evidence needed to tie her to a horrific crime.

* * *

_Her feet were stuck to the gross stained carpet of the motel room, and the only movement she was making was the rising and falling of her chest from her panicked breaths, and the dizzy swaying she was trying to ignore._

" _You went to the...to the...hospital?"_

_Why didn't she remember to grab it when she left? Why had she left it on the nightstand? Stupid, stupid, stupid…_

_Dragging a hand across her forehead, she tightened her mouth, looking anywhere in the room but at him._

" _Yes."_

_He watched her, as though he expected her to say more, but her insides twisted up into a mess when the thought even crossed her mind. Her next words were said with a little more irritation than she intended._

" _Just don't worry about it. It's nothing." He recoiled as though she had slapped him, and she might have felt bad if she wasn't so goddamn tired._

" _Don't worry about it?" he repeated, confusion rapidly transitioning into mild frustration on his face. "This is...a hospital wristband, Lizzie. How could I not worry about it?"_

_Food, she desperately wanted something to eat. She wanted sleep, about a century of it, she wanted to just close her eyes and forget, forget that she had to keep this secret from him, forget the guilt she felt over thinking she couldn't tell him, forget the reasons her brain used to justify not telling him._

"' _Cuz that's what I said to do. Didn't you listen?"_

_Finally she was able to unstick her feet, and she made a beeline for the bathroom, curling her hands around the yellow stained white counter of the sink, trying to control her breathing, which was a difficult thing to do when she heard him getting up from the bed, heard him walking to the bathroom._

" _Lizzie," he began as his hand curled around her arm gently, but she yanked it away from him completely out of impulse, out of panic._

" _Just drop it, Jack," but she knew that he wasn't going to, knew him too well to expect him to just let her wallow in it. A frustrated sigh escaped him when he leaned against the door frame. "Can you please just tell me?"_

_No, she couldn't just tell him. Because telling him that she couldn't have children, that she was barren, that the stupid fountain had robbed her of one of her dreams, opened her to rejection, to a final confirmation that he didn't want her that way._

" _Please drop it."_

_Chancing a glance at his face, her hands gripped the counter until they hurt when she saw the beginnings of anger starting to simmer in his eyes, in the way his brows were drawn together, in the way he worked his jaw._

_He stopped watching her to stare at the floor. "Since when do you not tell me things?"_

_Oh god, the barely hidden hurt in his voice nearly had her confessing, nearly...but he just wouldn't understand...and she couldn't expect him to truly care about that anyway._

" _Don't make this about you. I just...I just can't."_

" _Make this about me? You're the one being secretive."_

_She inched away from him, further into the bathroom, suddenly feeling afraid of him for the first time in her life, but god help her, she didn't understand why._

" _It has nothing to do with you-"_

" _Well, apparently it does. You tell me everything, love. So…" He went quiet for a moment. A dizzy spell from the drugs, she figured. "So what the hell?"_

" _Please, this is personal, Jack. I really don't feel comfortable-"_

_But she had told him personal things before, plenty of times._

" _Don't feel comfortable? Damn, I thought I was the only one you did feel comfortable around...guess I was wrong…"_

_She spun around with wide eyes, feeling the anxiety thrumming through her like an electric current, and she couldn't control it, couldn't stop it from making the words spout of her mouth like water out of a smashed fire hydrant. He was looking at her like he didn't know her._

" _Why are you being so bloody selfish?"_

_His fingers slid against the door frame when her words hit him, when his entire body recoiled again._

" _Selfish? What are you fucking talking about? I feel like I'm about to fall over from these bloody stupid pills and I climbed out of the only damn place that I want to be right now," he paused to twist around to point at the bed, "to ask you what's wrong, because I bloody hate seeing you in any kind of pain. And you're fucking calling me selfish?"_

" _No, what you're doing is pushing the issue, when I told you that I couldn't tell you, and then you make it about you, about how I can't tell you because of you, when it is just because I really want to keep it to myself, not because I want to make you feel like I don't trust you!"_

_And how she couldn't bloody tell him because then he would know that she loved him so fucking much she would die if she lost him, and then he could tell her that he wasn't interested in commitment, that he didn't want that..._

" _But you never keep anything to yourself with me-"_

" _Just drop it. Just go back to sleep and leave me alone."_

" _...leave you alone?"_

_No, no no no, she hated this, hated seeing the hurt in his eyes, the rejection, and she desperately wanted to chase it away, but if she was wrong, if she brought it up and he told her that it didn't matter to him that much because they weren't together anyway, and that he didn't want a relationship, and that it should have been obvious to her because he had never brought it up...it would kill her._

" _Leave you alone," he repeated again, shaking his head. "Nice to know that I'm not trusted anymore," and then he turned away, his shoulders dropping in defeat, as though a ton of bricks had been poured on them, and walked back to the bed, closing the bathroom door behind him a little harder than necessary._

_She stood there and stared at it for...she didn't even know how long, five minutes maybe, and was able to count the steps her body took to the tears as they happened. The change in breath, the pain in her chest, the immediate overwhelming regret._

_As she slid down the bathroom door, catching the light switch on her way down, she tried to keep quiet, tried not to make any noise, but it was so hard._

_All she wanted to do was curl up against him, feel his arms around her, feel his hands stroking her hair, telling her it would be okay…_

_The only movement she could hear on the other side of the door was the creaking of the bed. She wasn't sure if she had expected him to come back in the bathroom, but his detachment from her still stabbed at her, until she remembered that it was her that had told him to leave her alone when all she wanted now was to have him back._

* * *

"...Lizzie?"

His voice made her snap back to reality, for the moment anyway, and she found that he had his hand curled around hers again.

"Sorry, just thinking…"

A slow blink made his eyelids lower, then rise, and he tilted his head back. "…that was a fucked week wasn't it?"

He knew. He knew that she had been thinking about it, she wasn't sure if he knew that she had been thinking about it the entire week, or if he thought it had just come back to her, but he knew it was on her mind. He must have been thinking about it too.

A ' _fucked_ week' didn't even begin to cover it. "If that's what you want to call it…"

What else was she supposed to say? She didn't even know where to begin talking about it…

"Looking back, I think I was silly not to tell-"

" _No_ ," was his adamant reply. "I was in the wrong. I shouldn't have pushed you, shouldn't have gotten so pissed about it. I just...I just loved you so fucking much that when you suddenly wanted to keep something from me, after all those years of being so open, it was like something... _broke_ between us."

 _God_ , hearing him say it like that, thinking back to the way he had acted, knowing how much it would have hurt for him to be in love with her and have her act like she didn't trust him, it felt like a spear in her gut.

"I didn't mean to act like I felt like I was entitled to all of your secrets if that was how I came across. It was just...confusing for you to come to me with everything, only me, and then suddenly have something you couldn't tell me. That plus the drugs I was on because of my arm, the lack of good sleep, the lack of food, and the complications from that stupid ass bank job, just...it all just fucked with me."

She started to try and explain, started to try and give him reasons for everything, but the second she opened her mouth, he shook his head. "I have thought about that week for...well,  _too much_  probably, so let me tell you my theory, and we can see if it's right. I  _have_  modified it in light of recent events," he stopped to wag his finger at them. "The moment when you told me that you didn't think I was in love with you, that you were afraid I wasn't,  _a lot_  of things suddenly made sense.

"You didn't tell me about the hospital because you were afraid that...that if I found out, I wouldn't have the right reaction. You were afraid that I wouldn't...care  _that_ way, or...it would have been like a rejection to you, I think.  _Before_  this week, I thought that you didn't want to tell me because that was the first personal thing between us that  _only_  a couple really talks about, and you didn't want to be with me, so you didn't want to breach that line."

It was all said without him looking at her, with him looking somewhere behind them, but the impact his words had on her was so strong, so immediate, that she couldn't help but wrap both of her hands around his, squeezing it. She wanted to tell him that  _of course_  she wanted to be with him, but he knew that now, so she chose instead to try and explain what she had been feeling that first night.

"You're right. I...felt afraid of you, afraid that I could chase away the dream I had of being with you by telling you. It was obviously ridiculous and silly looking back on it, but back then, I was so petrified by the idea...and things only got worse from there…"

* * *

_It had been an hour since they had woken up, and they hadn't said a word to each other. Jack was sitting on the bed, leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette, and she was sitting at the little table next to the bathroom door, sneaking glances at him every few minutes, listening to the cold rain drizzling outside._

_The night before, she had slipped in bed, being careful not to touch him, and had tried to stay as far away from him as possible. She knew he had been awake, had seen his head shake against his pillow even in the darkness._

_The distance had hurt so much, was still hurting. She missed being wrapped up in his arms as she fell asleep, and hadn't realized how much she cherished it until it was gone._

_But that's the way everything is, isn't it?_

_Finally, when she couldn't stand the silence between them anymore, she tried saying something._

" _How's your-"_

" _Don't talk to me."_

_The rest of her sentence, how's your arm, was shoved back down her throat at his words, but she couldn't stay silent for very long, even despite feeling like he had just punched her in the stomach._

" _...why?"_

" _Because I don't want you to talk to me right now."_

_It echoed around in her head, reverberated through every piece of her body. His face was tight, stony, his eyes hard as he stared straight ahead at nothing._

" _I was just going to ask about-"_

" _I don't really care."_

_She snapped her mouth shut and sat there, staring at him for as long as she felt comfortable, then looked away, feeling the panic creep up, carrying the beginnings of her own anger with it._

" _So just because I keep one secret from you, now you suddenly hate me?"_

_A whispered 'fuck' came out of him as he dragged his hand through his hair. "I don't hate you, Christ, how can you even accuse me of that…"_

" _What else am I supposed to think if you refuse to talk to me? Because of something so simple?"_

_His head dropped into his hands and stayed there, shaking back and forth. "I don't have the energy to fight with you right now. If you really want to think that, fine, go ahead. Just do it silently."_

_God, why was she doing this? Why couldn't she just tell him? It was like she was watching a car accident happen in slow motion in front of her._

" _No. You're not going to treat me like that just because I keep a little-"_

" _...A hospital visit isn't 'little'. Do you know how many times either of us has sought medical help in the past twenty years? So when you go to the hospital, it must be something that I might want to know about."_

_She stood, almost knocking over the chair in the process. "You're not entitled to know everything about me!"_

" _Goddammit, I told you I don't want to fight r-"_

" _I don't care. You have to get past this, you have to-"_

_Then he was getting up, and she saw his clenched fist push against the mattress when he rose, and somewhere in her panicked irrational state, she thought he might hit her._

_His body froze when he saw the recoil, when he saw her arm jerk upward in a defensive motion. Several seconds passed that she desperately wished she could rewind, as she saw the shock cross his face, followed by the hurt._

" _Are you fucking kidding me?" he whispered, staring alternately at her face and her arm._

_Her head was shaking even as he started talking again. "Are you seriously telling me that you thought I was going to…" he couldn't get the rest out, and his hand flew up to cover his mouth._

" _...I don't...I don't know... "_

" _Fucking perfect," he kept going once he found his voice again. "First you stop trusting me and now you're afraid of me. Do you not get that I just want to help you with whatever the hell is going on?"_

" _But you can't help-"_

_The cigarette pack made a scraping sound as he snatched it off of the table, extracting one and then lighting it._

" _Yeah, I'm beginning to see that now. Christ Lizzie, the last fucking thing I would ever do on this planet is hurt you. I don't know what I did...it's like you stopped knowing me when you walked in and saw me holding that bracelet."_

" _I told you that it has nothing to do with you-"_

" _Then why are you suddenly treating me like a problem?"_

_His voice had risen, into a cross between a shout and an angry whisper, and then some wire crossed in her head, and she wished she could take the words back the second they left her mouth._

" _Maybe you are a problem."_

_It was awful, the way she could feel the shift in the room as they crossed the line from incredibly close friends to enemies, even as her face crumpled, even as she tried to tell him that she didn't mean it, that she hadn't meant to say it, but she couldn't get the words out, just barely managing to breathe at all._

_Even when his dark eyes lost some of their anger, mixing with a wounded look, she still couldn't speak, still couldn't navigate the turmoil of her head. Even when he turned away from her to drop himself back down onto the foot of the bed, burying his head in his hands, she still couldn't move._

_In that moment she decided that nothing had been as terrible as this moment for a long time, nothing had stolen her faculties for...anything quite so succinctly for a long time._

_The rain was the only thing they could hear as it fell on the sidewalk outside and she desperately wanted to reach out, wanted to gather him in her arms and tell him that she loved him so fucking much, tell him about the doctor visit, tell him that she was ridiculous and stupid and that she hated herself for what she had said, tell him that he wasn't a problem to her, tell him that he was so fucking far away from being a problem that it wasn't even funny._

_Tears burned a hot trail down her cheeks as she watched him sit there, guilt swimming through her head like poison._

" _..I...I didn't mean…"_

_She lurched forward, just barely touching her fingers to his hand when he jerked it away, refusing to look at her. "I didn't mean to call you that-"_

" _It doesn't fucking matter, you still said it," he snapped, the words rushing out in one breath as he suddenly stood, brushing past her. Out of pure impulse, her hand shot out to grab his, trying to pull him back. "...I'm sorry, please…"_

_He yanked it away again, spinning around to face her, and the pain in his eyes, mixed with a renewed anger, burning like coals after a bonfire had been extinguished, caused tears to flood out, making her vision get blurry, the skin of her face growing hot with shame and panic._

" _I don't know if I believe you," came his biting words, sinking into her like a knife. He turned away from her again, bracing his hand against the door._

" _We ...we can fix this-" she cried, her voice a desperate whisper, but he cut her off, snatching the keys off of the dresser next to him._

" _I'm leaving for the night. Probably be back tomorrow, I don't know-"_

" _You're leaving? Jack, I'm sorry…"_

_She surged ahead without thinking to slam the door shut as soon as he opened it, placing her just behind him so that she could feel the heaving breaths he was taking. It earned her a frustrated snarl, but he didn't otherwise move._

" _Don't be ridiculous. You can't drive anyway. The drugs-"_

" _I don't really give a fuck. I've driven under worse circumstances."_

_Her hand came up to curl around his shoulder fully expecting him to throw her off again, but the only reaction she got was his muscles tensing under her fingers. "I don't want you to go…"_

_He made a noise of disbelief that broke her heart. "...No? If I'm such a fucking problem, what's it matter to you?"_

_Inhaling when he turned to look at her again, she felt a terrible hope blooming in her chest, then it died when he shook his head, pushing an angry sigh through his nose, and a shriek of protest spilled out of her as he ripped his jacket off of the wall. When he yanked the door open she made one last attempt to grab at him and then recoiled as if burned when he sent a "don't fucking touch me" over his shoulder. The last image she saw was his outline standing in the pouring rain before the door slammed shut._

_The shitty carpet was rough against her knees when she sank down, the moment of shock transitioning quickly into awful tears, tears that made her head hurt, tears that turned her cries into screams of anger at herself, tears that made her chest constrict with a throbbing pain._

_It was all her fault, everything was her fault._

* * *

Her face crumpled at the memories before she could stop it, before she could prevent the unbelievable guilt she had felt from flooding back as though it had happened yesterday, and she immediately felt the bed shift, and glanced up for just a second to see Jack crawling towards her before hiding her face in her hand. A concerned 'hey' floated through the air, and then she was being tugged into his lap, her head coming to rest against his shoulder while he spread soft kisses across her hairline, her ear, her cheek, whispering 'shhh' as she cried quietly against him.

Once she thought she had enough control over her voice, she apologized again for the thing that she had already apologized for more times than she could count. "I never meant to call you a problem...you have no idea how much that  _tortured_  me...it was so far from the truth…"

"I know, I  _know_. I think I knew it then too, but I was so fucking afraid that it really meant that you didn't want me if you could say that...you know how fear warps shit."

She continued clinging to him, nodding in acknowledgment as he scooted them back against the headboard. "That night was so fucking hard for me, wondering whether you were going to even come back. I barely slept, spent most of it crying…"

His fingers stroked through her hair all the way to the ends, running onto her back to rub small circles there, staying quiet for a moment. "...I wanted to come back the second the door shut, but I felt so wretched that I just couldn't, so I kept going...I just felt like the fight that had always been coming, that one fight that was going to send us in different directions had finally arrived…"

* * *

_It had been the longest night of her life as she had laid there in the bed, tossing and turning in a cold sweat and the pool of her own tears on the pillow, catching glimpses of the digital clock on the nightstand as it crawled from one minute to the next, the red light burning into her retinas in the darkness of the room._

_The time now read 6:45, and she was ready to give up trying to sleep, the headache pounding in her skull enough of a deciding factor, but just then, the doorknob rattled, the sound of keys jingling on the other side, and Jack stepped through quietly, crossing to the table immediately to throw his jacket and car keys down._

_She bunched the blanket around herself as much as possible even as a spike of relief shot through her, a hot blush of nervousness covering her face as she tried to ignore the accelerating of her heartbeat at the same time._

_Her breath was held in her chest as he stepped over to the bed as though he was going to crawl in with her, then it was released in a soft whoosh when he shook his head and turned to go into the bathroom instead, the door shutting with a dull click. The shower started just after, and more tears leaked from her eyes, though she couldn't fathom where they were coming from. She didn't think she had any left._

_The desperate urge to get up and ask him if she could join him filled her, since there was nothing more she wanted in that moment than to stand in his arms as the warm water cascaded around them, but she knew the shut door was a message to leave him alone, and she hated herself for it._

_It took him twenty minutes to finish, and only a couple of minutes to emerge with a towel around his waist. She didn't even bother trying to pretend that she was asleep. There was no way she could fool him._

_Sitting up, wiping the sleep from her eyes, she watched him as he slipped the towel off and sat on the edge of the bed, drying his hair._

" _Did you find anything else out about the-" she tried, hoping that talking about something normal could steer them in a better direction, but he interrupted her._

" _We're not doing the bank job."_

" _...what? Why?"_

" _Because we're not."_

_A thousand things that she wanted to say bubbled to the surface, simmering there, but she couldn't find the motivation to speak as he rose, crossing the room to the duffel bag next to the closet door, pulling out a pair of boxers, black jeans, and a white tank top._

" _That's all? We're just not?"_

_He finished pulling the clothes on and finally turned to face her, giving her a full look at how exhausted he was as he dragged his hand through his hair._

" _Complications...look, it doesn't matter. We're just not doing it."_

_Understanding that she wasn't going to get any more information out of him, she lowered her eyes to the mattress. "Where did you sleep?"_

" _Car."_

_Her shoulders sagged as more guilt flooded her._

" _Jack, stop this, stop acting like-"_

" _Like what? Like you hate_ me? _"_

_Fucking Christ if that didn't tear her heart open, she didn't know what would._

" _I don't hate you-"_

" _You certainly don't fucking trust me anymore, so you might as well."_

_Just fucking tell him. Just fucking tell him. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He was suddenly smoking another cigarette as though he had just summoned it from thin air, but really, her focus was just slipping, holes and cracks were forming that she couldn't stop._

" _I never said I didn't trust you."_

" _You just suddenly draw a line in the sand, where things I am allowed to know are on one side and secrets are on the other."_

_God dammit she hated the world, hated everything in it, hated the stupid motel room, the stupid carpet, the bed, the rain that was still drizzling outside, herself, fucking everything._

_But she could never hate him._

" _You wouldn't understand-"_

_His head snapped around in her direction, his eyes suddenly blazing. "I am starting to think that I don't understand anything about you. How much other shit have you hidden from me over the years?"_

_Terrible anger clawed at her chest before she could suppress it at even the suggestion that she hid things from him on a regular basis. "Other shit? Are you mad? I never hide anything from you!"_

" _Right, like I should trust you now. You never would've said a word about it had you not left that bracelet in here."_

_She opened her mouth to argue, but couldn't find anything to say. A bitter laugh fell out of his mouth as he shook his head at her. "That's what I thought."_

" _You're right, you can't trust me, you should hate me. I fucking...I'm not worth anything else…"_

_It came out of her, the culmination of everything that she had been feeling. She wasn't good enough to have children, wasn't good enough to just tell him that she loved him, wasn't good enough for him, wasn't good enough to stop fighting with him. What the fuck was the point of anything anymore..._

_His head was shaking before she even finished the last sentence, and then he was reaching for her, and she was stumbling back away from him. He stopped, his hands rubbing hard over his face, another whispered "fuck" making it through his fingers._

_She couldn't stay in this fucking hotel room anymore. She didn't know where she was going to go, but she couldn't fucking stay here. The room spun around her as she barely managed to make it to her duffel bag behind the table, ripping some clothes out to replace her PJ's._

" _What are you doing?"_

" _What the fuck does it look like?"_

_Turning, she found him glaring at her again, his eyes like chips of onyx in the shitty lighting of the hotel room. "You're really going to leave huh?"_

" _You did it to me, what the fuck's the difference?" she snapped, dragging a pair of jeans and a t-shirt on._

" _I left because I was angry. You're just abandoning me."_

_Once she was dressed, she circled around to fully face him, breathing hard through her nose._

" _Because you wouldn't fucking listen!"_

_She watched in frozen horror, hidden behind her anger, as his temper switched from defensive to offensive._

" _I wouldn't listen? I always listen to you. Every time you have a problem, I drop what I'm doing and I listen. But now suddenly there is a wall around you, now there is a limit to how much you trust me._

_Her mouth opened to throw some kind of retort back, but he kept going._

" _Maybe I should have been an asshole to you all these years because I'm really questioning why I wasn't. Maybe you aren't worth being trusted. Maybe you're not fucking worth my time."_

_The rain outside fell harder as his fists clenched against his jeans. All she could do is stand there and watch him blow up, watch him unravel._

" _Next time you have a problem, don't bother coming to me. If you don't trust me then I don't care about helping you."_

" _It was one fucking secret, Jack, for fuck's sake!"_

" _Then you called me a problem, treated me like I was a bother to you, and barely acted like you did anything wrong."_

" _I said I was sorry…"_

" _And you meant it, right?"_

" _Yes, of course I did-"_

" _I don't believe you, I'm probably not going to believe anything you say again, actually. And to think that I not so long ago killed about thirty people for you. You, I did that for you. I'm starting to think that you might not have deserved it."_

_She stopped breathing, she felt like she was being strangled, and an acute pain throbbed in her head making her feel dizzy. "...You don't mean that…"_

" _No, I do. I should have just fucking left you in Russia. Should have never rescued you."_

_When she didn't say anything, because she felt like fucking dying and couldn't make her brain even formulate a coherent thought, he shook his head again, a bitter laugh somehow making its way out of his clenched jaw as he crossed the room again to gather his jacket and the keys._

" _Nothing to say? No, because you know I'm right, about everything. You can stay here. I'll go, don't want to be around you anyway. Don't bother trying to contact me, I won't answer-"_

_It might have been a move of desperation, or panic, she wasn't sure which. It just came out of her like vomit._

" _You want to know what I went to the doctor for?" she said, her voice approaching hysterics, and he stopped just in front of the door without turning around. "Not that you're going to care anyway, but I found out that I'm...infertile. Because of the fountain. That's what I went there for. To finally...I've been afraid of it for so long…"_

_His head was shaking again, and he turned to her without looking at her, digging in his wallet instead to pull out some money. "Here, pay for the room when you leave," he snapped, tossing some cash at her. She watched it float through the air to the carpet. "Good luck. Maybe you'll find a different fuck buddy that's willing to put up with your bullshit."_

_The door made a sickening slamming noise when left, mirroring the pounding that her heart was doing._

_As her world fell apart around her, one thought was clear as it burned into her skull. He didn't care, didn't care that one of her worst fears had been realized, had treated it like it was nothing, didn't even tell her that he was sorry for her. He didn't want her, had never wanted her, thought_ she _was a problem, couldn't stand being around her, and now he had left her for good as though she was expendable. A fuck buddy was all she was to him._

_And in that moment, she hated him for it, even as the emotion sent alarm bells ringing in her head._

* * *

He held her in his arms tightly as the next round of memories renewed her tears, the churning in her stomach that she had felt coming back. Once she was calm enough again, he nudged her head from his shoulder and made eye contact with her, using his thumb to clean her cheeks up, then pulled her in for a soft kiss.

"I...I wish you would've told me right away, but I understand why you didn't," he said in a muted voice. "Regardless of whether I was in love with you or not, I would've done everything I could to make you feel better.

"I spent...far too much time thinking about it, about that whole week. As you can imagine prison didn't leave me with a whole lot else to do. But I think the thing that hurt the most, and it all nearly killed me, was when you cowered in front of me. That shit... _fuck_ , you have no idea…

"There is nothing,  _nothing_  on this planet more repulsive to me than the thought of hurting you, and then to have you act like I wanted to do it anyways-"

When she tensed up, he stopped. "It was an impulse...I didn't actually think you were going to hit me, it was just the panic, and your clenched fist...my reaction was out of my control...but I'm sorry for it anyway. I'm  _so_ sorry for everything that happened-"

" _Hey_ ," he cut in. "I'm not mad about it. I realize that you didn't mean it, I'm just...talking."

She nodded, swallowing. "I hated knowing that everything had stemmed from the fact that I couldn't tell you, that it turned into you thinking I didn't want you, into me thinking you didn't want me, into us shouting at each other. Every fight we had ever had was about something impersonal, so-"

"-it made it a lot worse because of the shock, yeah. I figured that out too. The entire week was just a bunch of bullshit that should have never happened, and it cost us for far too long. But you know, in the moment, you can't foresee consequences very well."

His hands threaded through her hair, playing with it for a moment.

"Just...just know that I didn't...that I am so fucking sorry for the way I acted towards you. I hated being angry with you, absolutely fucking  _hated_ it. What I said about Russia, that was  _asinine_ , and I will always be here for you no matter what your problem is.

"And, we'll talk later about it too, but the second it registered with me what you had actually said as I was walking out, I felt so terrible for leaving you in there, so disgusted with myself, but there wasn't anything in my head that told me you wanted me back in there."

The anguish she could see in his eyes from the memory left her no doubt that he was telling the truth.

"I know," she replied quietly, fidgeting with a spot on his neck. "Could we maybe-"

"-take a break? You read my mind, darling. Let's go back to sleep for awhile. We can pick up where we left off later tonight. You know, talk about the thing that we actually wanted to talk about to begin with."

A gurgly little laugh burst out of her as she laid down, snuggling against him, draping her arm across his chest, making small circles with her finger, glancing up at him to find him looking relaxed. "You were snuggled against me when I woke up. I love it when you do that."

"Oh yeah? I can't help that these," he paused to reach down to trail a finger over the breast that was smushed against him, "make nice pillows. And you're always really warm. Never going to need to worry about being cold when I have my own personal heater."

She laughed into his skin, feeling her eyes get heavy. "I...um, I'm glad we were able to talk through that, as much as we could anyway."

"Me too," he said, sounding like he was starting to fall asleep already, but she had something else she wanted to say to him still. "Jack?"

It was accompanied with a nudge that had him jerking a little against her. "Hmm?"

Her hip slid against the sheets as she leaned up to kiss his cheek. "Never again, fighting like that. I can't do that again. It'd kill me. I just got you back, and I intend on never letting you go."

Even in the darkness of the room, she could tell that he was affected by her words, his arm pulling her even closer to him evidence enough. "Never again, love."


	19. Many Facets of One Beast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 19! Hope everyone enjoys! :)

September 15th, Tuesday Morning, 11 AM

* * *

She tied her long black hair up into its customary ponytail and didn't even bother looking in the mirror at her reflection. The dingy lighting of the hotel room she was staying in didn't do much to flatter anyway, but she wasn't one to care about the state of her appearance beyond being awake and alert.

Crossing the room to grab her phone, she kept glancing at the box like it was going to blink out of existence if she didn't, as though she had just developed OCD specifically for that reason.

Hesitating only a moment, she tapped until she got to Arturo's contact page and pressed call. She wanted this whole operation over and done with as soon as possible. Just having the box in her possession made her uncomfortable, especially with the cops now looking for it, and the Yakuza most likely knowing of its theft. That prospect was more than a little chilling to her, but she knew that all parties involved were well equipped to handle any blowback from  _them_.

And there was the ever-growing problem of Sekar Handa. He reminded her of that lump that a person finds and ignores for far too long before getting it checked out only to find out that it is going to kill them in a week. He was next on her to-do list.

Arturo answered on the third ring, but it took him a second to speak, preceded by some rustling noises. "Suzuki, Buenos Dias. I trust you have good news for me?"

Good news. Sure, if good news meant that she had orchestrated the theft of an international case's evidence by hiring two very wanted criminals in order to un-kidnap a little girl because her father couldn't stop being a problem for the Cartel.

"The evidence is with me."

Another gurgly laugh, and more rustling. "Bueno, Bueno. It appears that you hired the right person for the job, then."

"I never expected Jack to fail."

"Ciertamente, ciertamente."

"So what's the plan now?"

The plan was that he was going to board an airplane as quickly as his beer and re-fried bean infested body could carry him, along with his Cartel goons, and come here with Gabriella to get the damn evidence and do the exchange. She wanted to be done with this shit.

"We have made arrangements to travel. We'll be leaving the cálidos Rayos de sol of Mexico to bask in the rain of England later today."

"And you will contact me when you arrive?"

"Si, si, we want this done as much as you do. That poor  _property_  of yours should really get back to her padres."

The lie that she had told Jack and the others about the gun had been good, well, good enough, but she had an inkling that Jack hadn't totally believed her, and neither had Elizabeth. But, they hadn't seen it to be worth their while to figure out what the truth actually was, because to them, it couldn't be anything they needed to be concerned about anyway.

And all she was concerned about was keeping the two of them out of the loop at this point. They had done the job that she had asked them to do, and their involvement needed to end there. She just hoped that all parties, the Cartel, the Yakuza, the cops, and Handa didn't royally fuck this whole thing up, but even she had to admit that there were a million ways that this entire thing could go to hell.

That was the way of the world. There was always a million ways that anything could go to hell.

But Gabriella was worth the risk. She would put every single person she had involved on the line to make sure she was safe.

"You realize that you will need to be incredibly cautious here, right? Generally, the Yakuza don't feel the need to travel to fix problems, they can operate from Japan just fine and still get things done, but this time might be different."

"Suzuki, Suzuki, we can handle the japonés if they become a problem. Don't worry. And I trust you are cutting off Jack and the Swann woman? I don't see their continued involvement as necessary."

"Yes, they're done. Though, if the Yakuza or any of us decide to bring them back in forcefully, well, let's just say that Jack won't appreciate it very much."

"...No, I wouldn't think so. Jack Sparrow is a hombre peligroso if provoked. I would imagine his  _novia_  is no different. I don't know how much you already know about her, but I know nothing, and even I  _know_  that she isn't just arm candy for him."

She hadn't had a chance to do much digging into Elizabeth, but just the way she had conducted herself at Jack's house, she had an air of supreme authority about her, and Jack had looked  _proud_ , as though there was nothing he enjoyed more than letting her take control. They were in love, most certainly, any fool could see that just by watching them for more than two seconds.

"Yes, well, you would know all about arm candy, wouldn't you Arturo? Unfortunately, you don't have the benefit of looking like Jack. I rather think it's only your money and position of power that gives you an advantage there."

"Ahhh, mujer, you hurt my sentimientos. But no matter. Do you have a place in mind to meet for the drop-off?"

She did, in fact.

"There is a little park in Bath close to The Ayrlington, the hotel I'm staying in. Hedgemead Park. It's currently closed to visitors, something about repairing the pathways. We can meet there."

It had taken a while to decide which hotel would be suitable, but the cozy out-of-the-way nature of the Ayrlington had been a perfect choice if a little cramped.

"Un parque? Suena bien. Once we obtain the evidence, we will arrange a location and time for you to collect Gabriella. It will be up to you to ensure your own safety while traveling back and forth, however."

"I figured as much. Please contact me again when you land here. Just to keep everything...on the same page."

"Convenido, Suzuki. Te veo pronto. Adios."

* * *

The lamp on her desk was starting to overtake her entire box of vision, making it warped and splotchy since she had been staring at it for almost three minutes.

She would rather think about  _anything_  else, like how best to organize her fuckstorm of an office, or which car she should think of buying next, or whether she ever wanted children, or how to possibly approach dating.

Anything besides this damn case. Because the damn case had been blown wide open on Sunday, all because of the asshole on the phone. Before, it had been a cut and dry gang violence case wrapped in a much larger sex trafficking blanket.

Now? Now it was like someone had shredded the entire damn bed with a pair of Freddy Krueger knife gloves. Nothing made sense anymore.

"I think we need to re-think this entire case, starting from the beginning," she said to no one in particular, even though Cyril was sitting across from her, looking rather concerned.

"Why's that?"

"...because the man on the phone wasn't Cartel."

"So?"

She could already tell that it was going to take some convincing to get Cyril on board with her theory.

"Think about it. If the man on the phone wasn't Cartel, then he was  _hired_  by the Cartel. But why would the Cartel hire a third party to do their work for them?"

"I don't know, maybe because they killed a Japanese prosecutor and don't want to implicate themselves anymore into the investigation?"

"...Maybe. But what if it's the reverse?"

"Reverse? What are you talking about?"

Sighing, she stopped twirling the pen that she had forgotten was even in her hand, and prepared to turn the entire case on its head.

"What if someone else killed the prosecutor, rather than Ramos?"

Cyril stared at her for a moment as if he hadn't heard her, then shook his head in a back and forth jerking motion as though she had offended him.

"Someone...someone else? A frame job? That would break the Cartel's ties to the trafficking-"

"Not necessarily. Maybe  _this_ trafficking operation, but I'm still convinced they have a hand in the sex trade somewhere."

"And who do you think actually killed him?"

She didn't know. A hundred possibilities had...but any one of them could be right, or all of them could be wrong.

"...I think you might be right,  _maybe_ ," he said, rubbing at his face. "But I have just as much of a clue as to who the actual guilty party is as you do. What about the phone suspect?"

"What about him?"

Of course, she wanted to find out who  _he_ was, as  _he_ had been dominating her thoughts more than anything else lately, mostly because she  _hated_  being outsmarted.

"Well, you said one of our top priorities is to find out who he is. Any theories there?"

Once she had figured out that a third party had indeed been hired, she had gone through what skills the suspect had just based on what he was able to do. Sighing, she leaned back in her chair, grateful to talk about  _something_ else.

"The man is obviously good at manipulation, he's good at scoping out buildings, knows about weapons and bombs, and also likes fast cars."

"Fast cars? You...you don't think he was driving one of the sports cars that boxed in the evidence truck do you?"

The man on the phone, which is what she had been calling him in her mind, didn't strike her as the one driving the car, but rather the one in charge of the plan.

"No, but I do think that he was in one of them-"

" _Monica,_ isn't it a little too convenient for the suspect to be involved in the theft  _and_ the threat?"

"Why wouldn't he be? I can't imagine that the Cartel would want the operation to involve that many people. If I were to guess, two people were in the car in the back, our suspect being one of them, and one person drove the car in the front. They must have had one or two other people involved off-site to shut the cameras down."

Cyril was staring at her again, with one of those stares that made her think he was contemplating her intelligence at the same time as her theory.

"And I'm guessing you think he is the one who tranqued Unwin and Slaymaker? What, are we in a fucking Fast and Furious movie all of a sudden?"

The similarities  _were_ striking.

"I do think he was the one that overtook the truck. But beyond that, why him? Why did the Cartel hire him?"

Her only answer to that question is that the man's job was being a criminal for hire. The Cartel wouldn't have selected anyone random, or even anyone that just had book smarts about the mechanics of such an operation. They would want someone with experience. Someone who was  _good_  at being a criminal, good at stealing specifically.

"...let me guess, you have a theory about that too?"

She did, though he was going to reject it immediately because even she understood how hairbrained it was. But today was all about being hairbrained. And  _fucked_. And then  _fucked_ some more. This was the only time that  _this_ connection would even make a little bit of sense.

"You know the string of...high grade merchandise robberies that the UK and the rest of Europe have been experiencing for like….the last seven or so years? Cars, jewelry, documents, things like that?"

"...of course I do. I did the case study on them. About comparing them to run of the mill bank heists and home invasions or business robberies. Remember?"

Of course she did. At least the bits of the presentation that she hadn't slept through.

"What if...and I  _know_  this sounds crazy, but what if it was all the same person?"

He raised an incredulous eyebrow, twitching his head in confusion as though she had just suggested that babies really did come from storks. She had had this theory buzzing around in her head for awhile actually but had never had a concrete reason to mention it until now.

"...the same person? Please don't tell me that you really have a criminal mastermind theory brewing. Really, Monica…of all the things..."

"All of the merchandise that was stolen was either expensive or important. And every single theft was done cleanly without incident. We never pinned down any suspects because we never treated it as one case, we treated each one as a new case. Maybe we should have been looking into only one suspect."

"Ok, so what's the point of bringing this up, if I were to go along with it for a second to humor you?"

Taking a deep breath, she checked with herself to make sure she actually believed the possibility enough to even mention it.

"What if that person is the same man on the phone that I talked to? That orchestrated the theft? What if we're looking at another JM type? Only a version that likes to remain faceless and nameless rather than waltz into the Tower of London and let himself get captured wearing the Crown Jewels, which to me almost makes him  _better_  than-"

"He was one of a kind," he cut in. "...but, if your theory is even a little bit plausible, we are dealing with someone very intelligent, very resourceful, and  _very_  careful. Certainly not psychopathic though, which JM certainly was. Our suspect relies on a  _team_ , it appears, at least for this operation."

They both sat there, contemplating the ludicrousness of the entire situation.

"If we are to go down this route," Cyril continued, "we need to reexamine the most recent theft cases that were closed off. See if we can come up with anything new that could give us a face or a name."

She sat there, wondering if Cyril was trying to take the piss out of her because she had expected to need to offer up organs for him to even consider her idea.

"...you mean, you're actually open to the idea?"

"Well, since we have had experience with someone like that already, I guess I don't see why there can't be other criminals like that, and it  _is_  suspicious that we never found a suspect for any of those robberies. I'll dig up the case files. Maybe going two months back?"

"...Yeah, yeah, I suppose that would work. And what about getting the evidence back?"

"It makes sense to go through the person who stole it, doesn't it? At least, for a place to start. Because right now, we don't have anything else. I'll send out an order for constables to record any sightings of exotic sports cars in the area, and I'll alert all of the surrounding police departments."

He got up, leaving her to wallow in her overpriced leather office chair, hating every decoration that she had in her office, allowing herself to focus on the annoying reality if her theory ended up being true. If someone else really did kill Akihito Ishii, then that meant that the Cartel was being framed, which introduced a whole new clusterfuck of problems.

But if they pursued this angle, and it was the Cartel that killed Ishii, then they were wasting their damn time.

She  _hated_  wasting her time.

* * *

He zipped his pants up as the latest blonde secretary rose from her knees in front of him, and then gazed around his huge office, something he liked to do to remind himself of exactly how much money he had and how much power he could exert with it.

"Same time next week, Mr. Handa?" her voice floated out, sounding like she belonged on one of those Real Housewives TV shows. Sure, same time next week. If she was here next week. This was the tenth secretary that he had gone through in the last two months.

"I...look  _forward_  to it, Ashley."

"It's Amanda," but her face only fell a little bit before she ran a red acrylic nail over his clothed crotch, giving him a kittenish smile as she turned on her heel. "Amanda...whatever."

He'd had two Amanda's by now, not counting her. Unless he was fucking their names up too. But what did it matter? They all gave him blowjobs if he promised them raises and vacations to the Caribbean and other extravagant gifts he never intended on following through with.

Circling around to the other side of his desk, he was reminded of the current pressing matter in his busy schedule. A matter that should have been taken care of a week ago.

A matter that was currently taking the form of a middle finger on a piece of white paper. He had received it in the mail three weeks ago in a black envelope, sealed shut with a sticker that said: "Fuck You". It had apparently been hand delivered to the front desk.

Normally, he wouldn't have had a clue who sent it, had it not been in the black envelope, with the "Fuck You" sticker and the printed out middle finger. Thankfully, because of those details, the mysterious admirer became not so mysterious.

Not that they had ever been mysterious to begin with, because the  _asshole_  that sent it liked to remind him that not only was he still alive, he was just waiting for the next moment to fuck with his life. But the fucker should have been taken out last week. Point blank,  _boom_ , a bullet to the skull.

He'd been in fucking Mumbai for fuck's sake, and the assassin that he had hired was literally given the opportunity to kill him on a silver platter. He had told her where the asshole was staying, but apparently killing people in hotels was too difficult, because he had walked away perfectly healthy and bullet-less.

Suzuki had reassured him that she would get the job done, but the target was proving more difficult than she had anticipated.

 _Difficult_  was certainly somewhere on a long list of insults that he could call Jack Sparrow, cocksucker and fuckhead being closer to the top.

As a CEO, he had access to piles of money, mountains of money, more money than he could spend in a lifetime. He also had access to very good lawyers, and the combination of those two things landed him in a position to do some... _criminal activity_  under the table. Or, at least he could if Jack Sparrow hadn't made it his life goal to make all of his business ventures go to hell.

He didn't have enough fingers to count how many times Jack had intervened in his affairs, but it was enough to want him dead, currently six years too late.

Snatching his phone off of the desk, he decided to figure out  _where_ exactly Suzuki was with putting the man six feet under. She answered on the last ring.

"How's my favorite Japanese-"

"Shut the fuck up, Handa. What do you want?"

"Wow, so rude. Consider for a moment that I'm your employer, I could make you go away very quickly, and let's not forget that you are a week late on what I hired you for."

"I told you that Jack wasn't going to be a get-in-get-out target. Just imagine John Wick mixed with a touch of Joker and sprinkled with a dash of Dominic Toretto, and you have Jack Sparrow. Or is that too complicated for your silly little brain?"

He clutched the phone tightly for a moment, clenching his jaw. "I know full well how slippery Jack is. He's been stealing shit from under my nose for six years without being caught."

"I assure you, I will get the job done-"

"I know you will because I'm coming to London to make sure of it."

There was silence on her end for a moment. "...How did you know-"

"He has a place there, somewhere in the UK anyway. Not sure of  _exactly_  where, but I do know that since you fucked up killing him in Mumbai, you would've followed him there."

"Not necessary, Handa-"

"No no, I've already got a plane arranged. I'll be there within a few days, and if you don't have Jack dead by then, I will be forced to give you extra incentives. Is that clear?"

"...Clear."

The call ended, and he smirked at how much power he could exert over even an assassin.

* * *

Chris had some kind of techno playing again as she searched Jack's kitchen for something to eat, waiting for him to emerge from the bedroom.

"What's your opinion on that Trivoly lady?" he asked, making himself some coffee.

"Um...I don't know, she seems competent enough. I didn't see anything spectacular about her though. Just another cop."

Hopefully, anyways.

"Yeah, I agree. Hey, you know, if you and Jack want to get out of the house for a little bit, there is an ice cream shop kind of out of the way. It's a farm, called Marshfield's. Almost straight north."

She turned to smirk at him. "Are you giving us permission to go on a date?"

The prospect sounded  _very_ attractive actually. It would be nice to get some normal time in with him before they embarked on the second half of their conversation.

"Well, no, it's just that I don't think we all need to treat the house like a stronghold that we can't leave. I doubt the Yakuza are going to break down our front door, and I actually really doubt that they are going to be leaving Japan. Even if they do, it's unlikely-"

"Yeah, they have no idea we're involved, and currently, they have no way of finding out. And ice cream  _does_  sound good."

His face relaxed, and he looked a little too pleased with himself. "What?" she asked with a little giggle.

"...Nothing, I just like that Jack finally has you back. He's...like a brother to me at this point, so seeing him happy is nice."

Turning back to continue searching the fridge, she finally settled on making sandwiches. "Remind me to stock Jack's kitchen with actual food at some point. And I'm sure that he really appreciates having you around. Have you ever told him that?"

"Told him what?"

"That you see him as a brother."

"Well...no, but he doesn't seem like the type to enjoy discussing-"

"Tell him. Seriously, I think he'd like to hear it."

"...Yeah, maybe."

Jack  _would_  like to hear that. The closest thing he had ever had to a brother was Will, and she wouldn't even call their relationship that close. It was more  _little brother_  than anything, in that Will just annoyed Jack most of the time, such as when he clubbed Jack over the head with an oar, or when he traded Jack's ship to Sao Feng, or when he ruined Jack's leverage landing them marooned on an island.

' _We could use a ship. The fact is I was going to not tell Barbossa about bloody Will in exchange for a ship, because as long as he didn't know about bloody Will, I had something to bargain with. Which now no one has, thanks to bloody stupid Will.'_

Smiling at the memory as she slapped the bread on the counter, she grabbed the mayo next and attempted to unscrew the lid, only to find that someone had put it on with the goal to not allow the next person to get it off. After struggling with a good thirty seconds, she finally heard a snicker to her right and turned to find Jack staring at her with a grin on his face and Chris nowhere in sight.

"You know, even a King can ask for help once in a while-"

"...I don't... _oh my god why is this on so tightly_...I don't  _need_ help…" she gasped as she made one last effort. Jack stepped up behind her and circled his arms around her to grab the jar, which she conceded with a heavy sigh. She turned around just in time to see the lid pop off.

"You loosened it for me," was his quippy response as she glared at him, barely allowing the little smile she was battling to curve the corner of her mouth up. "Whatever."

She stepped up to give him a kiss before taking the mayo from him. "Chris gave us permission to go on a date, by the way."

"Oh, did he?" Jack responded as he wound his arms around her again, making the task of spreading mayo on bread a tiny bit more pleasant. "That's nice of him."

"He mentioned that there's an ice cream place, Marshfield's, north of here. Ice cream sounds good."

"It would be nice to get out of the house," he said in between kisses on her neck. "Let me eat something, and you finish your sandwiches, and then we can go if you want."

He opened the cupboard and had just as much difficulty finding something to eat as she did. "I was telling Chris that it might be a good idea to go like...grocery shopping at some point. Buy some real food," she said to his back.

Finally, he settled on making sandwiches himself, successfully managing to  _accidentally_  flick a glob of mayo onto her shoulder. "Oops, knife slipped."

"Right, it  _slipped_. Slang term for being annoying-"

"And why do we need groceries?"

"Well," she started, wiping the offending substance off her skin, "all you have here is sandwich stuff, some frozen microwave stuff, and hotdogs."

"...There's some soup in the cupboard…"

"...We need groceries. You'll survive a grocery trip, I think. When we get back from Lima, we're definitely going shopping."

"I dunno, I'll prolly die of boredom," he said as he took a bite of his sandwich, a look that was a cross between taunting and pleading in his eyes.

"You'll be fine."

* * *

"Which car do you want to take?"

She scanned the options in the garage, before allowing logic to take over preference. "We should probably take the truck. It's the least flashy vehicle you have. After the job, they'll be on the lookout for sports cars."

"Yeah, you're probably right," he responded, plucking a set of keys off the hook on the wall. The Silverado's headlights flashed as he unlocked the doors. "You wanna drive?"

"No thanks, I hate driving trucks."

"I think you just want to make me do all of the work."

He laughed when she stuck her tongue at him before disappearing around to the driver's side to climb in. She followed suit on her side, noticing that the truck was  _very_  clean, as though it was rarely used. "Have you ever actually driven this thing?"

"Of course. I bought it for the purpose of blending in if need be. Chris uses it to go pick up anything that requires hauling."

"...when you say that you bought it, do you really mean  _James_  bought it?"

The only response she got was a grin as they pulled out of the garage. She rolled the window down a bit to get some fresh air as Jack turned some music on, keeping it at a low volume so they could still talk.

"So, have you been to any concerts lately?" she asked. The last concert they had gone to together was the original Woodstock, in 1969. Jack had proposed the idea to try and take their minds off of Russia. They had only stayed one day before deciding that it was too chaotic to stick around, with the hoards of people and smoke and just general uncleanliness.

"Yeah, actually. Went to Maiden in May with Chris and Shawn at the 02 Arena in London. Was a pretty good show, just wish they would have played more of their classic stuff than they did. I don't really like concerts much unless it's a band that I really like."

"Why's that?"

"I dunno," he said as he turned onto London Road. "Usually I would rather be on the stage rather than watching. Hard to be a guitar player when you are a wanted criminal though."

"You could just wear a mask and use a stage name. A lot of bands do that. The supporting band for Maiden, their lead singer is called Papa something and dresses up as an evil Pope."

"And," he paused to grumble about how the person in front of him was driving like a grandma on valium, "what do you suppose I would dress up as?"

She had half a mind to suggest his Captain outfit, then burst into a fit of giggles at the image of Captain Jack Sparrow jumping around on a stage with a guitar. "I don't know...you could go full vampire like Lestat in Queen of the Damned."

"And wear a gross mesh shirt? No thanks. Pretty sure I could do the whole lip-syncing bit though. And I would make a pretty good vampire too."

"Your self-control would put all other vampires to shame."

The thought that he was thinking occurred to her at the same time as he looked around at her for a second, making her giggle again. "Maybe you forgot," he began, turning onto a road with a farm at the end of it, "but I do have a bit of an addictive streak. I was addicted to alcohol, well I guess you could say I still am, just addicted in moderation, I was a drug addict for a little while, and I'm addicted to  _you_. So do really suppose that I could control bloodlust?"

"I would have faith in you, I think."

"Uh huh. You know, last time you used that line, you were trying to seduce me. Is this ice cream venture just-"

Whatever he was going to say, and she had an idea, turned into a string of garbled hysterical "no stops" when she shot her hand out and dug her fingers into his ribs, tickling the living hell out of him.

"I'm not  _always_ trying to seduce you," she said once he recovered. "Sometimes a date can just be a date, just like a cigar is just a cigar."

They had just pulled up to the farm, which was incredibly handsome, with green pastures filled with cows and a lovely house that she supposed the ice cream shop was in. "Besides, you do your fair share of seducing too."

The smell of farm assaulted her nose as her feet landed on the gravel road. Jack was waiting for her on the other side of the truck with a playful grin on his face. "Never said I didn't, love."

As she stepped forward, warm skin suddenly touched her hand, and she looked down to find Jack's hand enclosed in hers. With a jolt, it occurred to her that they had never properly just  _held hands_  before. That thought, it really hit her, right square between the eyes, that they were really  _together_.

She didn't even try to hide the megawatt smile that threatened to break her face, and she rather fancied that she started to bounce slightly as she walked, enjoying the feel of the light breeze in her hair. For once it was a fairly sunny day.

"I love seeing you smile," came his voice, almost a quiet whisper with how softly he said it, as though he meant the words only for her. She sidestepped so that she was pressed up against him as they walked. "I mean, you're the one  _making_  me smile, so…"

"That's my job, isn't it?" he said, sneaking a kiss onto her head. Oh god she loved him, and she repeated the thought in her head over and over even as she shook her head in mirth at him, still grinning like a fool.

* * *

A stout handsome old woman wearing red-framed glasses looked up from behind the counter when they walked in, and she knew immediately that the woman was one of the types to gush over couples.

"Hello, hello, welcome to Marshfield's. Just give me a moment."

They watched her bustle around, pawing at various papers, and grumbling about not being able to find the phone. Finally, she came around the counter and clapped her hands. "My name is Margaret, I am... _well_ , co-owner, but I might as well be the owner since my husband has taken it upon himself to become engrossed in...oh,  _nevermind_. I get carried away sometimes. It's not every day that a couple comes in to get ice cream, and a gorgeous couple at that."

She blushed, unable to help it with someone else commenting on them. "You have a lovely farm here. How long?"

With a nostalgic look in her eyes, Margaret replied, "31 years," in a wistful voice, hundreds of memories almost playing for them as she gazed at them. "What about you two? How long?"

Almost 300 years? Six days? She wasn't sure which answer was truly accurate.

"Just under a week," she answered. "But we've known each other a long time."

"Ahh, finally admitted that you loved each other then? Excellent, never enough love in the world.  _Well_ , over here is our ice cream selection. Take a gander, talk amongst yourselves. You can sample any flavor you like, and you can certainly mix flavors together if you wish."

An air of knowing far more than she let on came from the woman, but rather than feeling invaded, she felt strangely comforted.

Jack followed just behind her to the counter, where she counted at least 25, maybe 30 different flavors. "You had a hard enough time picking food at the airport, how on earth are you going to choose here?"

"I picked Subway!"

" _Yeah_ ," he said with a snort. "After going through the entire list of other available restaurants,  _and_ Subway was my first suggestion."

"You're a first suggestion. Ooh, that one looks good." She pointed at a pot of bright yellow ice cream.

"Heavenly...Honeycomb?" Jack said, sounding a tad skeptical. "I was looking more at the Caribbean Coconut."

"Why not the Rum and Raisin?"

He made a face like he had just swallowed something distasteful. "You couldn't pay me enough money to eat  _raisins_. I'll eat all of the rum flavored ice cream in the world, but  _not_  the raisins."

"They're just dried grapes. And you love grapes."

"I'm  _not_  gonna try it-"

"Could I have a bit of the Heavenly Honeycomb?" she asked Margaret, cutting off Jack's protests.

"Certainly, certainly, and how about I select one for your lovely man here myself? A bit of a surprise?"

She smirked around at Jack, a challenge in her eyes, daring him to deny the woman's suggestion. The challenge was accepted with a slow pull at the corner of his mouth. A pirate's smile.

"If you  _insist_."

Margaret presented him with a brown-colored spoonful of ice cream, watching him closely as he stuck it in his mouth, looking around the room as he rolled it around, contemplating the taste. "I knew he would like that one," she whispered, glancing at her with glee dancing in her eyes. "Toffee Fudge Fiasco."

When he finally swallowed, he tilted his head in defeat. "Pretty good,  _I guess_."

They both ordered a bowl of the flavors that they had sampled, sitting in the corner of the shop next to one of the windows. "She's interesting... _so,_ Chris said he finds it highly unlikely that the Yakuza will come here, but I'm not sure I agree with him."

"They have no way of knowing that we're involved even if they do-"

"That's what I told him," she said, sighing. "I can't wait for Lima.  _Hopefully_  they don't screw our seats up this time."

He grinned down at his bowl. "Yeah, no kidding. Hey, I was going to tell you in the truck but I guess I forgot. I actually met the guys in Maiden a few years ago. They were, of all the places, in a gun shop in London. James Purdey and Sons. I walked in for a shotgun and did a double take when I saw Bruce standing there holding a pistol.

"After I found the right moment to approach him, we got to talking and I steered him in a different direction as far as the gun he was looking to buy. Then we switched to planes and he told me a few stories about piloting because he flies the plane for their tours.

"A few minutes later, Nicko and Steve, the bassist and drummer, walked up and at that point, I was in full starstruck mode if you can even imagine that. I chatted with them for a good two hours."

"Did you get any autographs or anything?" she asked, thoroughly fascinated by the image of a starstruck Jack.

"No, didn't want to bother them with that. Did get a picture though, which I have somewhere back at the house. What about you? Met anyone famous?"

She searched through her memory.

"I met Angelina Jolie once, sort of. I was in the same room with her in Los Angeles. Didn't say anything to her though. A year ago I was also in the same room with Jennifer Lawrence, but didn't say anything to her either. As far as people I have actually met, I had a ten-minute conversation with Iron Man himself, Robert Downey Jr. He's incredibly funny.

"I also met Emilia Clarke in London. She's lovely. I met, oh who else... _oh_ , I also met Ryan Reynolds in Miami. Completely strange, but he was at a record shop there, just browsing, and I forget why I was there, but I was bored, so I went to the record shop, and just like you, I did a complete... _well_ , it was more like a five-take when I saw him standing there.

"Once I gathered the courage to say something, we talked about Deadpool for a couple of minutes, and it turned into me quoting almost the entire movie and him just laughing."

He swallowed a chunk of ice cream, making a 'holy shit that was too much ice cream at once' face. "I'd love to meet him.  _Oh_ , I forgot about this one, and this might actually be the best celebrity encounter I've had. So, I was at a bar in Hollywood in September of '85, the Whiskey A Go Go, just sitting there drinking.

"In walks Nikki Sixx, the bassist for Motley Crue, and the guy is already hammered, probably high too, I think he was into coke and probably heroin at that point. Anyway, he sits down right next to me, and the guys in the bar were pretty used to seeing him around apparently, so no one else bothered him.

"He starts telling me, and this is a hilarious thing considering that I was just talking about Maiden, and he wasn't really telling me, more telling whoever was listening, about how he thought he accidentally fucked Bruce's girlfriend while they were on tour with Maiden that year."

"Oh  _god_ , what did you say?" she asked through her laughter.

"I asked him how a person manages to  _accidentally_  have sex with someone else. He told me that she walked into his trailer and demanded that he have sex with her. They fucked, she left, and nothing else happened. Then he started to say that he was worried that Bruce had found out, and all I could do was sit there and call him a fucking idiot.

"I was a huge fan of Motley Crue, still am, and the only chance I got to meet one of the band members, I spent a half hour listening to a high on coke and drunk on Jack Daniels Nikki Sixx moan about getting some with another guy's girlfriend. Imagine that."

"Poor you," she said, finishing off the last of her ice cream. "That is an  _interesting_ claim, accidentally having sex with someone else. Have you ever accidentally had sex with me?"

He nearly spit the last of his ice cream out. "No,  _no_ , I'm fairly certain that it is always entirely on purpose."

On the tail end of her giggling, Margaret approached their table, a smile on her face. "Was everything to your liking?"

"Yes, very much, thank you," she responded, returning the smile.

"No problem, no problem. It's on the house even, as a celebration, and congratulations."

They thanked her and got up to leave, and then Jack pulled out a 20 banknote and tossed it on the table anyway, muttering something about 'people being too nice'.

* * *

He was Tatsuo Izumi, next in line to lead the Tokyo Branch of the Yakuza. At least, he was if he managed to clear himself of murder.

Did he regret killing Akihito Ishii in that parking garage?

The short answer would be  _no_ , but the variation of the answer  _no_  would also depend on which time a person was referring to.

In the moment, it was the most logical choice he could have made. The man was getting far too close to uncovering their operation, and that was simply unacceptable.

But  _now_ , the consequences of that choice were blooming outwards like some kind of biochemical weapon, and the prospect of halting the prosecutor's investigation paled in comparison to the problem that they needed to stop now. As he looked out of the window of the airplane, down at all of the miniature cities and cars, he wondered if the poison of crime was finally going to swallow them all like the atomic bombs that dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The  _long_ answer was that he had a  _reason_ , an excuse for being what Sasaki had termed as reckless in the only lecture he had received about the whole mess. He inferred that his excuse was the only reason that he was still in the position of power that he was. Any other situation and Sasaki would have had him killed.

He had lost his wife three years ago to a series of unfortunate circumstances. She had gotten wrapped up in some kind of theft operation, simply the wrong place at the wrong time. The thief, a woman that he only knew as  _Liz_ , had threatened her to give up information about the item she was trying to acquire, which his wife had complied to. Through a cruel twist of happenstance, two Yakuza had seen this confrontation and had assumed that his wife was a rat, an accomplice to the thief, and had executed her the next day.

His soul hadn't been the same since, and he had spent every minute that he had available trying to track  _Liz_ down, but she was like a wisp of smoke, barely existing in the tangible reality.

When he did find her, and he  _would_ , he was going to make her suffer for his wife, going to make her taste the pain that he had felt, was  _still_  feeling.

But before that, this Ishii mess needed to be sorted out, his name needed to be cleared, Ramos needed to get the charge, and then everything could go back to normal.

It was going to be a long flight to Britain he knew, and there was nothing more that he would like than to turn around and go back to Japan.

* * *

With sluggish movements she trailed along after Art, her long dark brown hair flapping in the wind. The hotness of it was dry against her face, and she had to squint to not see everything as blobs of color. The world still looked big to her, still looked like a place that she would like to explore, when she was done pretending that playgrounds were the world anyway. But the world was shrinking to her with every day that passed, every day without her parents.

"Where are we going?"

The other men treated her like the teachers at school had treated her, or like how the animals on a farm are treated; like a faceless thing. But not Art, Art answered all of her questions, listened to everything she said.

She didn't like Art. He was  _too_  nice to her, his face was always stuck in a greasy smile, his eyes holding too much  _niceness_  to the point where she was reminded of how a troll might lure children across the bridge before he killed them under it.

He didn't  _really_  care about her, not really, not in the way that her mother cared about her. But she hadn't seen her mother in three weeks.

"Well," he said, turning and stooping down to her level, the other men rolling their eyes behind him. "Remember when we watched Oliver? We're going where Oliver was. Gran Bretaña,  _Britain_. You'll like it there."

Doubt it. It sounded  _cold_.

When he rose again, his huge belly at her eye level as he turned around, she eyed the plane with her nose screwed up and her mouth puckered. The other men were whispering about why they needed to bring her with, why the 'Japanese bitch' couldn't just come here instead.

She missed Suzuki too, even if she was a little less friendly than her mother was. She was someone to talk to, someone that didn't act like Art did, like he wanted something from her. Lately, she had been telling her that she would get her back to her parents soon, to trust her and that she wouldn't let anything bad happen to her.

The men had been whispering about things around her for weeks, and she had picked up on words like 'framed' and 'Japs' and bad words that they called her father. She tried to understand, tried to  _think_ , but there had been nothing in the library that she found herself in every day to help her.

With its old book smell and cranky front desk lady that always yelled at her for leaving books everywhere, the library was her second home, and Suzuki loved taking her there. She rather thought it was because Suzuki preferred being alone, but could still watch over her at the library, even when she disappeared in the rows of books, running her fingers over the spines until one caught her eye.

The other day, she had come upon a book that was hidden down on the bottom shelf in the back corner. It was a book on pirates, and she had spent all day reading it, completely fascinated. There were things about their ships, about swords, about something called the  _Brethren_ , about something called  _pieces of eight_ , and even a couple of named pirates. It was a week ago now, so she couldn't remember the names exactly, but she remembered them having something to do with birds. She had even dared to bring it to Suzuki to ask some questions, but she had no answers for her.

A gurgly sounding " _Gabriella_ " floated back to her from where Art was, and she realized that they were already standing by the plane. He was motioning for her to climb the steps, and she tore her attention away from the skyline, away from wondering what was out there, beyond these men and their secrets and Art's huge belly and his too nice eyes.

When she was older, when she was a teenager, instead of being the boring age of  _ten_ , where she had to listen to adults and rules and had to play outside only at certain times of the day and couldn't have all the candy she wanted, she would explore, learn, and  _no one_  would tell her what to do.


	20. Aphelion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 20!
> 
> This one is another long one. I consider it a companion chapter to Chapter 18, and the next chapter (21).
> 
> I have decided to give all three chapters space-themed titles, since they are discussing the space that was between them.
> 
> This chapter is called 'Aphelion', which means:
> 
> The point of orbit of a planet, asteroid, or comet at which it is furthest from the sun.
> 
> I figure Jack and Lizzie are each other's suns, so that would be why I picked this word for the title.
> 
> Hope everyone enjoys!

September 15th, Tuesday Evening, 7 PM

* * *

September gusts of chilly wind blew the cigarette smoke around his face as he sat gazing at the water of the pool, rippling like a mini ocean.

' _I certainly didn't fall in love with her by accident.'_

Being dead on his luck, running low on money, and  _owing_  money to far too many people, all he had wanted that day, almost three hundred years ago, was a ship that could actually make it across a substantial amount of water without the constant threat of sinking. The  _Interceptor_  had made for a fine target, and it being a Royal Navy ship had given him a little extra satisfaction.

An on-the-fly manipulation of the dockmaster with a few quick coins, a quick confrontation with a couple of hapless guards, and he had made his way onto the  _Dauntless_  to put his plan into motion.

 _Then_ , the world, or fate, or whatever it was, decided to make James Norrington embark on the unfortunate venture of proposing to Elizabeth Swann, resulting in her fainting and falling into the harbor right in front of him, miraculously missing all of the rocks.

The  _guards_ , Murtogg and Mullroy, had never learned to swim in all of their time on the earth, which left  _him_  to dive into the water after her. He was unaware of  _who_ she actually was, but he didn't think he would have hesitated anyways if he knew that saving her was likely going to get him arrested.

He was also unaware of how much his life was going to change when he hoisted her over the edge of the dock to the sight of red coats and bayonets, but when he saw her face, how her huge brown eyes stared up at him just after she finished coughing up about a gallon of seawater, how she looked at him not with  _fear_  or disgust, but with a fascination, a hidden kinship, he  _knew_.

When he had reached down to find her wearing a piece of the Aztec gold around her neck, when he caught her looking at him even as he was being arrested as though her eyes had been glued to his body, when she charged in front of him in nothing but her shift to protest, and when she damned near seemed to  _like_  getting accosted with his handcuffs and held at gunpoint despite her calling him despicable as she took a little  _too_ long to re-arm him with his effects, he  _knew_.

When she had chased him down through the jungle and demanded truths that he wasn't really willing to give, when she demanded to know even more, when he had shown her his bullet wounds, and the scar on his arm, his pirate brand, when they had danced around a campfire singing, and when she had burned his bloody rum, he had  _known_.

And at first, he had hated it, hated that someone had insinuated themselves so far in his thoughts without his permission, hated that he seemed to care about her as much or more than his damn ship, hated that he suddenly had something besides his ship that meant something to him. It wasn't supposed to happen.

But he thought about her anyway, every night in his cabin, he thought about her, wondered if he would ever see her again, and then lectured himself that a pirate couldn't afford to think about her, because it was a waste of time, she was in love with the Turner boy, he was constantly on the run from the law, she most certainly didn't harbor any feelings for him anyway, was safely tucked away in Port Royal, and he had a far more pressing matter to attend to.  _Jones_.

So imagine the surprise when she had marched up to him in Tortuga wearing men's clothing and demanding that he help her find Will Turner. He had hidden his befuddlement underneath a bit of manipulation and subterfuge, but the prospect of her sailing with  _him_  on his ship had been a tad distracting.

Which had been doubled when the moment they set sail, she had seemed to forget all about Turner. He hadn't been able to keep track of all the times he caught her staring at him, and not even necessarily at his face, just at  _him_. Nevermind the times when she delightfully engaged him in verbal battles that held barely-hidden innuendo, and thank  _fuck_  for that, because it had been the perfect cover to hide behind, hide the actual terrifying depth of her in his heart, at least until she had made him break the one rule that he had made for himself upon becoming Captain of the newly christened Black Pearl.

 _Only care about yourself_.

One look back at the damn ship being devoured by the Kraken, and he had stopped rowing, stopped trying to run away, faced with the damnable fact that he simply couldn't just leave her there, and he was so certain that she was going to know  _why_ , but then she shocked him beyond words, well beyond all words except one really, when she took it upon herself to chain him to the mast of his own ship.

' _Pirate_ '.

Even as he was thrown into a maelstrom of emotion, even as he felt that hot knife of betrayal, the cool pride at her finally proving to be what he knew she was all along, the fear of dying, and a hundred other things, there was  _one_ cushion, one moment of satisfaction when he had spied the pain and regret, the horror, the loss. He had dug himself into the depths of her heart as well, but he hadn't known it was love at that point. He just knew it was  _something_.

Proven when she had gone to the literal sea version of Hell to retrieve him, when she had once again forgotten about Turner who had been standing right behind her to run up to him, a smile of relieved joy on her face, when she had started once again staring at him at every opportunity, though it was now accompanied by tracing her lips subconsciously.

But even then, even when part of him had been so certain, the other more dominant part of him told him that he had as much of a chance of her actually being in love with him as he did with becoming the King of England, and that even if she was, it was a pointless thing to pursue because no one ever stuck around long enough to matter in his life.

He always drove them away, fucked it up somehow, and with her, he wanted to have what he had, instead of reaching for more and getting burned. So even when Turner left her behind for her to choose her path, even when she had chosen  _him_  to be her first, one of the purest moments of his life, dragging him up to the royal quarters, even when she had sloshed down the fountain water with him, he had never asked her, never inquired as to whether she wanted something more, because it fucking terrified him. The entire prospect terrified him.

Because what if she  _didn't_? What if he had the wrong idea all along? What if she only liked him because he wasn't going to force her into corsets and tea parties? What if she only wanted a physical relationship? He had played a game of 'what if' in his head for,  _well_ , it was shameful to really think about how long he had let himself wallow in insecurities for a person that prided himself on being rather intelligent, but he had done it anyway.

It had been exhausting being around her, seeing her smile, her beautiful smile, and wondering if she was smiling because of him or something else, her golden hair whipping around in the wind, analyzing everything she said to him, trying to figure out if she was getting distant or if she was still putting up with him because she wanted to, listening to her laugh and then thinking about how she could be just pretending at that point, and then hating himself for being so preoccupied with it, for questioning her, for being so damn  _insecure_ , for being unable to just fucking  _ask_.

But would he give up the last couple of centuries with her when he hadn't known that she was as in love with him as he was with her, afflicted with the same mental turmoil?

Not for fucking  _anything_. Because he still had her, by his side, in his bed, and that was precious in and of itself.

Then, almost three centuries of wondering and thinking and questioning and analyzing had been lifted,  _banished_ , the second she had asked that one simple question.

' _Are you in love with me?_ '

Spoken with a hesitant tone that held hope, the insecurity she had been harboring forever, fear, relief and a hundred other things. He had been so shocked that all he could tell her was that yes, of course he was, then he had just held her, wondering if he was in another one of his dreams.

It was only now just sinking in that she was in love with him, if it was ever going to actually sink it completely, that the beautiful creature that had stolen the heart of a notorious pirate  _returned_ the almost crazy amount of affection he held for her, that she planned to be by his side for as long as he wanted her, which  _was_  forever. It was mind-boggling to him that she wanted him, that she loved him, and he knew he was going to spend the rest of their relationship convinced that she was going to leave him any second, because that was just how he was built, and he hated that part of himself.

"Jack?"

Which would explain the gnawing fear that he was currently trying to fend off by going through an entire pack of cigarettes. He hated being in the spotlight, hated explaining  _feelings_. He was awful at it, could never really articulate what it was that he felt, and his connection with Lizzie was so precious that he saw any possibility of severing that thread as terrifying. Certainly, talking about all of the fucked up things he had felt and thought and lived through without her around could...even though she had told him that nothing would make her leave him.

Hearing her and letting his mind believe that were two different things, separated by a chasm of self-doubt, insecurity, panic, and everything in-between. It was a wonder that he had gotten through talking about the hotel without trying to run, trying to change the subject, but he had owed her an explanation, still owed her explanations.

"...Jack."

He just hoped he could get through this leg of the conversation, especially since that damnable spotlight was going to be on him. It was fine when he was in control of the situation, when he had everyone on puppet strings, but talking to her wasn't like a game, wasn't something that he had to win, wasn't something that he could use Plan B on if he fucked up, or if something went wrong. Talking to her was like handling a precious stone that could disintegrate with even the slightest bit of pressure, at least to him. It was vulnerability at its finest with her, and what scared him the most was that sometimes being vulnerable around her  _didn't_ scare him.

"Hey,  _fucker_."

When he finally noticed Chris standing there, the look he sent him would have made anyone else sprint away, but Chris just sent the look back with a raised eyebrow.

"...Lizzie said she'll be in the bedroom when you're ready, whatever the fuck that means."

He was never going to be  _ready_ , but he couldn't sit out here forever. Nodding at Chris, he stubbed the last of the cigarette out in the ashtray on the table and rose from the chair.

* * *

When he closed the bedroom door behind him quietly, he found her stretched out on his... _their_  bed, flipping through one of his photo albums. "Hey," she said when she glanced up to see him standing there. "That was good ice cream, wasn't it? I wouldn't mind going back at some point."

"Yeah...it was good," he replied as he internally panicked and made a last-ditch effort to delay by heading into the closet to change into a shirt that didn't smell like smoke. He emerged to find the photo album abandoned on the bed and her staring at him in that 'I know something is wrong' way like she always did.

Dragging a hand through his hair, he took a deep breath. "Just nervous, that's all."

"...I thought you might be. Just remember-"

"-that I have nothing to...I  _know_ ," he paused to consider something. "Come here."

She eyed him curiously before climbing off of the bed and walking over to him. It had been gnawing at him, bugging him ever since the memory had been brought up earlier, and he knew that she knew, but he also needed to tell her so that she knew...again. When she reached him, he took her hand and tugged her into his arms, just holding her for a moment, enjoying the warmth of her body and the way her curves fit perfectly against him. Eventually, she drew back on her own, and he kept his face angled towards the floor until she decided that he was definitely still delaying. "Love?" came her voice, soothing him for a moment.

Reaching out to run his hands through her hair, spreading it out on her shoulders, then let them rest on each side of her head, he finally made full eye contact with her.

"I realize that...you probably already know this, at least, I  _hope_  you do, but I wanted to make sure." He paused to make sure she was listening completely. "I don't care how angry you get, or what you say to me, or how angry  _I_ get. I will  _never_  lay a hand on you. I would kill myself before I ever did that."

Stopping to let the words sink in, he watched her face, watched her swallow, watched her mouth part slightly, watched her take a slow breath. "I  _know_. I...I'm sorry that I made you think I didn't know that. I  _hated_  the look on your face when I raised my arms...I just-"

He cut her off by drawing her into his arms again, kissing the top of her forehead. "I was also wondering...if you wanted to talk about... _it_. The doctor visit. Since…"

Since he hadn't given her even a second before he had stormed out of the hotel room like an asshole, too angry in the moment to even hear what she had said.

She tugged him back to the bed, and he crawled on top of it to sit in front of her, keeping one of her hands in his own. "Well, I... _desperately_  wanted to tell you," she started, making circles on his hand with her fingers. "I want you to know that. I wanted nothing more than to crawl into your arms and cry about it, but I was convinced that telling you could make me finally face the awful possible reality that you didn't want me that way, that you didn't understand why I wanted to tell you...I thought it would expose...I don't even know…

"I was...I knew I think a long time before I went to the doctor's but I was always afraid to get confirmation, to really  _know_. There was always this hope in the back of my mind that I was wrong, since I was still getting my...that we were just getting lucky. But when he told me...when he...it was like I had never known, like I never had the suspicion...it was so shocking…

"And then when I drove back to the hotel, all I could think about was that I couldn't tell you, and that made it so much harder, keeping it to myself…"

It was all said to the comforter on the bed, as though she couldn't bear to look at him, but he was having none of that, lifting her face, then foregoing words to just pull her into his lap and kiss her until she couldn't remember what she was hurting about. "I would have done everything I could to make you feel better darling," he murmured when he pulled away. "I hated seeing you suffer about something that I couldn't help with. And-"

He broke eye contact with her for a moment, wondering if he could really explain why he got so angry.

"-the  _reason_  I got so angry was, and I'm not saying that it was justified because it wasn't and I started acting like an asshole, but the reason was...you were the one thing that I had expected to stay, where nothing else or no one else had ever stayed. I could always count on you to trust me, to be open with me, to not...and it wasn't that I  _expected_ you to tell me everything as though I had a right to know.

"I just...that was the way it had always been. We went to each other, we were each other's confidants. So when you suddenly had something that you wanted to keep from me, I panicked...about a lot of things. I thought that maybe...maybe I had just been kidding myself all of those years, I thought that maybe you had someone else, or  _others_ , basically my entire concept of our connection felt like it was falling apart in front of me, and I had no way to stop it.

"Then when you started packing, started to leave, all of the...I really...allowed myself to believe that you would never leave like everyone else did, and I just... _snapped_. But it was more anger at myself rather than you, anger about not being good enough to keep you around, anger at pushing you to leave. I did feel angry with you, but it wasn't really at  _you_ , just the fact that you were abandoning me. Somewhere in my fucked up head, I thought you knew I loved you and didn't care, were leaving anyway, so I did the only thing that I knew how to do. I attacked, lashed out..."

Suddenly he felt hands squeezing his shoulders, and he looked up to find her shaking her head, a signal for him to stop talking, not that he believed he could have continued anyway. "You never stopped being good enough, love. You are beyond good enough for me. When...I never imagined it would escalate to what it did...but the more we argued, the more anxious I got, and I couldn't think clearly anymore...look, it was just fucking stupid, it should have never happened, and we forgive each other for the motel. Okay?"

All he could do was nod, wondering what he had done to deserve this beautiful angel because he certainly didn't know. "Are you sure you want to talk more, love?" she asked, searching his face.

Did he? No, he didn't. He just wanted to lay her down and kiss her and make love to her and forget that anything bad had ever happened, but this was reality, and they  _had_  to talk, had to get it all out so it didn't fester in the dark places in their minds, just waiting to come out.

"We have to, darling."

She stroked his face with her thumb, before dropping her shoulders and sighing. "I suppose we do."

And what they had to talk about next was something that he...that stayed buried more than anything else, really. When he had left the first time from the hotel, he had been looking for something to distract himself with, something to  _work_  on, and he had found a beautiful charcoal black Ford GT just sitting in a parking lot. What he had been  _unaware_  of was that Lizzie had set her sights on the same car even before they had ever arrived at the motel. He had also been unaware of the fact that police were patrolling the area that day.

* * *

_Cold hard rain pelted down around him, striking the skin of his face, soaking his hair, but he hardly noticed, barely noticed his own fucking thoughts as they screamed through his head like the wind that was whistling by, making the water on the ground shift and lurch in different directions. His boots slapped against the sidewalk with each angry step he took, as though he was trying to smash holes through the concrete. Maybe he was, maybe he didn't care about what he was doing, didn't care that the door of the motel was growing smaller and smaller behind him, didn't care that she was-_

_His heart raced beneath the leather jacket that felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, beneath the cloth band tee that he was wearing, beneath layers of skin and bone, and he wished that it would just stop, that it would just freeze in its frantic motion to beat out of his chest, wished that his stomach would stop turning and twisting, wished that he could shake the overwhelming urge to puke in the dead grass that was the same color as the crusty old carpet of the motel._

_Her face, with its pleading glistening eyes, quivering mouth, it wouldn't fucking leave, like it was permanently plastered on the surface of his skull, on the surface of his eyelids too so that every time he squeezed his eyes shut her face swam in front of him, a disgusting reminder that even if it took two hundred years, everyone left him eventually._

_A rock was launched forward with an explosion of water from a puddle as his boot connected, and then he ground to a halt, just standing there fuming in the steaming wet musty air, letting the rain collect on his jacket, not even bothering to wipe it away from his face, even as it pooled into his eyes, even as everything in front of him lost shape and definition, rendering him blind._

_He wanted to crawl out of his own body, wanted to slide into the small river that was running along the side of the concrete, wanted to vanish, disappear into nothingness. He had never hated anything as much as he hated himself in that moment, had never been as angry, had never felt his fucking fingers go numb with rage, had never felt teeth grind together like this, had never wanted to self-destruct so fucking bad before._

_Of course she couldn't trust him, who the fuck would trust him...she probably had someone else that she trusted now, someone that she ran to when she got bored with him, someone new, someone that...was better. How could he have been so stupid...so blind to the fact that he had been...losing her before this, that she had been pulling away, even as she had laid in his arms._

_Everyone left, always left, nothing mattered anymore, not the rain, not her, not him, definitely not him, he was never going to be enough, was…_

_Or maybe_ she _didn't deserve_ him _, maybe she…_

_...Thoughts were swirling...why had he ever loved her in the first place...stupid stupid stupid...shouldn't have fallen in love with anyone...should have known she was going to leave...should have known he was going to fuck up…_

_The rain was coming down harder, masking the few angry tears that he didn't even admit to himself were falling, and he still didn't bother to wipe his face, didn't give a shit, about anything. His body was trembling from the cold that he hadn't even noticed yet, and then his feet started moving again before he even…_

_Where was he going? Did it matter where he was going? The only fucking place he wished he could still be was behind him, probably sitting behind the door wondering why she had ever given him the time of day…_

_But she...nothing had ever been real with her, what else had she hidden from him? How much did he know about her really? Was she even real? Had he hallucinated every smile she made at him, every laugh, did she hate him?_

_She should if she didn't, probably did now._

_All registration of sounds, colors, sensations, the feeling of the ground underneath him, the air, the rain, himself, it was bleeding away as though he had really taken a knife to his chest and carved himself open, until the only thing he wanted to do was give up, just collapse onto the sidewalk and stop breathing, drown in his own pathetic existence._

_Hated her, hated her for making him feel for so long, for making him believe that she cared, for making him let his guard down, for...never again…_

_Hated her stupid smile, her...the way she could always calm his world like the most soothing music, or the soft smell of a vanilla candle, hated the way she kissed him, and hated…_

_Was there a point in hating anything? Was he just wasting his time even pretending to care about anything?_

_Was there a point?_

_His chest constricted just then, as though his body had made the choice for him, had made breathing harder, had made him focus on inhaling the polluted air of London into his lungs, and exhaling it with angry puffs, each breath threatening to turn into a scream._

… _._

… _.._

_Go back. Go back to her you fucking idiot. Stop this._

… _.._

_Can't._

_It was like a constant downpour of toxic sludge in his mind...covering everything, warping every thought that tried to steer him back to sanity. He couldn't go back there, couldn't look into her eyes again, couldn't look at the pain there again, couldn't open himself again. He was closed to the world, like a fucking dead portal. No one would make it through, not her, not anyone._

_Eventually his thoughts lost all coherence, turning into a constant buzzing, like a radio station that was barely coming in, or the static on the TV that would warp into a picture every few seconds, and all he could think to do was keep moving away, keep walking, through the rain and the cold and the air, until he wasn't even sure how far he had gone, wasn't sure where he was going to end up, wasn't sure how long he had been walking, the only indication was that the daylight had disappeared._

_Then everything went blank, his thoughts went clean like someone had erased the board, like he had been given a reset button, and he looked around to find himself in the fucking parking lot, the same parking lot where he had driven to last night. With the same ink black GT that he had found, and it became very clear in that moment that he needed that car, needed it like he had never...it became his very existence, because focusing on anything that even toed the line of deeper thought would kill him, would destroy him like a dam bursting under the pressure of too much water._

_Maybe he had been walking to the car the entire time, on autopilot...he didn't know, didn't care. Swiveling his head to his right, then his left, scanning the area in front of him, and throwing a quick look over his shoulder, he saw no movement, nothing, and immediately knelt to break his way in, focusing on it like he had an audience of a million people all expecting him to perform at a level of perfection as yet unknown to humans._

_Seconds dragged by as he twisted and wedged the door open, each noise blinking out of existence as the only sense that mattered was sight and the sharpness of his own mind, until finally, the interior of the car was visible through the door, and with one final push, it swung open._

_The next sound he heard did make his heart freeze, just like he had wished, made his heart freeze and then accelerate to a speed that had his head swimming, had the world dipping and twisting like he was on board a carnival ride possessed by fucking Satan._

_Red and blue flashing lights lit up his vision next, even as he was shaking his head, not even caring about being caught, just another fucking notch in the end of his life as he knew it. Rising from the asphalt, he glanced over his shoulder and immediately recoiled at the flashlight shining directly into his eyes, followed by an authoritative "put your hands against the vehicle and don't move"._

_Tired, he was so tired all of a sudden, barely having the strength to do as the cop asked, uncaring as the cop patted him down, uncaring as the cop drug the pistol out of the back of his jeans._

_Then the white-hot spike of anger was injected again as he heard the clink of handcuffs, mixed with the "you do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence" line that…_

_His jaw clenched as his head was pushed against the GT, as the cold steel was locked around his wrists, and he didn't even hear the questions at first, not that he was going to answer them anyway. They didn't need his fucking name, didn't need to know whether he had been drinking, didn't need to know anything about him._

_Fuck them._

_As he was pulled back, as he was told to walk towards the cop car behind him in a straight line, he happened to glance at the sidewalk past the line of cars, and he saw a person standing there under the street light, right next to a phone booth that he hadn't even noticed. He followed the arm that was still holding the phone, clutching it against the side of the booth as though...followed the arm all the way to the shoulder, then…_

_No._

_Fuck no._

' _Are you fucking kidding me' came out of his mouth without even thinking, but he could only mouth it, because his voice was dead, and he wanted nothing more in that moment to scream, to shout at her, to…_

_His world was cracking open, and the only thing that kept him tethered to reality was the warning sound of the cop's voice._

… _.._

_...This is what he had come to, defeated by trusting someone, again, fucking defeated, destroyed, conquered, annihilated, all by the woman he loved, the woman he would have gladly died for nine hours ago._

_Now she was going to put him in jail, behind bars, like the problem that she had called him._

_A million thoughts exploded in his head like a carpet bomb, but they all amalgamated into the only thing that he could force out, the only thing that his voice box could formulate, as though his vocabulary had been reduced to two words, and he was so goddamn angry that he didn't even focus on saying them loud enough for her to hear, as long as she could see the anger on his face, as long as she knew._

" _Fuck you", like a bullet from his mouth, aimed at her, and he knew that this was the image he was going to have of her, this was what he was going to see every time he tried to think about her, the image of her standing there in the street light glaring at him with a fire in her eyes, a fire that she only reserved for people that she never wanted to see again._

_A fire that he had prayed would never be directed at him._

_And now it was, as he counted each drop of rain that hit her skin, glistening orange, as he glanced at her hands, her hands that...were still clutching the telephone like it was her only connection to life...at her golden hair that was clinging to her face in wet chunks, at her lips that were quivering…_

_Then like a recording had been triggered as the police lights took up more and more of his vision, every awful thing he had said to her in the motel came slamming back into him as though his brain had been keeping them in reserve for this moment, and he had never felt like he deserved something as much as he deserved for her to hate him enough to do this._

_All because he had been too stupid to tell her that he loved her, to try harder to keep her, to stop her from fading away, to convince her that she didn't need to keep secrets from him. All because he had let her slip through his fingers._

_Her message was heard loud and clear. She_ didn't _want to see him again._

* * *

Words were suddenly something of a challenge to him, all of them seemed to fly away as soon as...but he had to try and explain anyway, couldn't back out now, even though Lizzie was staring at him with a look of trepidation.

"I think that was...well, as close to a mental breakdown as I have ever had, anyway. I got in the car for about thirty seconds, but I was too pissed to drive, so I started walking. I don't even think I knew where I was going, I just wanted to  _go_ , far away, as far away from the pain as possible.

"I was just so... _angry_ , at you, at myself, at life, at...when I got to that parking lot, when I saw the car, it's like my survival instincts kicked in and made me go into self-preservation mode. I focused on the car, and nothing else. Turns out self-preservation when I'm in that  _fucked_ of a state doesn't help much. I barely looked at my surroundings, didn't bother to do a profile of the area beforehand, just wanted to get in the car and drive as far away as possible.

"But even through the entire walk, I didn't outright blame myself for anything. Again, that was my survival instincts kicking in. I didn't think about what I had said to you, didn't think about what you had said to me just before I left, didn't even think about the fact that I left at all. All that I  _could_  think about was how my entire life up until that point had been a lie and I was just riding a slipstream of anxiety and panic all the way to that car.

"It wasn't until I was being handcuffed that I realized how much I had fucked up...and it wasn't like a fog clearing or anything, it was like I had been standing in a dark room and suddenly had a spotlight shining on me in my head. All of the awful things I had said to you, I was seeing them as a spectator, and then I realized the gravity of what you had said to me, and in that moment it was like all strength just...left me. I didn't give a shit about anything that happened after that, because I had lost you, and nothing mattered in my life besides you.

Feeling like he had said everything without taking a breath, he stopped, and swallowed down the lump in his throat, watching her in glances, hesitant to hold eye contact with her. She grabbed one of his hands again and squeezed his finger.

"Jack, I know I've already said it multiple times, but I swear to god that when I picked up that phone, when I saw you kneeling next to the GT, it was never my intention to put you in jail. I just, and I will explain in more detail when it's my turn, but when I approached the lot and saw you, I thought you were...putting the final nail in the coffin between us.

"I thought you were...marking yourself as my enemy, and I got so angry that I just wanted to attack you, so I put in a call about an auto theft. Never in my wildest dreams did I actually believe you were going to go to prison. It was a complete petty knee-jerk reaction."

And prison is where he went. After nodding in acknowledgment of what she said, he stayed quiet for a good ten minutes, and she let him, while still alternatively squeezing and stroking his fingers, keeping him tethered to the present.

"...Lizzie," he finally said, hesitant like a doctor about to tell someone they have a month to live, " I...I'm going to tell you about...when I was locked up, but I don't want you to think that I am trying to make you feel guilty. I'm not, I just want everything to be out in the open, no secrets, no glossing over, anything. Alright?"

At first, she didn't seem alright, her eyes flickering around the room, her hands drifting away from his for just a moment, then she collected herself, squared her shoulders, and sighed. "Alright."

He took a deep breath himself. "I don't remember much of the ride to Pentonville, where they took me at first. I remember signing a confession to grand theft auto, and I was sentenced to three years-" at her sudden confusion, he held a hand up, "-I'll explain."

"The penalty in the U.K. is a felony for GTA, and a minimum sentence of two years. However, thanks to the pistol I was carrying, unregistered of course, I got another year for it. So that brings us to three years by the time I actually saw the inside of a jail cell-"

"But you said you were in for four-"

"I know. That's because I... _actually_  got another five added on when I was transferred to Wakefield, which brings us to eight. I... _assaulted_  a detective. He...well, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's go back to the first night that I can recall at Pentonville. It was...early February, the 3rd or 4th, I think. The only reason I remember it was because they somehow forgot to feed me that night. I think they had a new guy on rotation, and he skipped my cell."

* * *

_He marveled at how many details were really in simple things._

_The small flecks and imperfections of the wall that he had been staring at for going on a week, the different patterns and colors of the linoleum floor, like blood splatter, the changing grime and dust around the corners of the window edge, high against the ceiling._

_Even the temperature in the cell fluctuated. In the morning, it was cold, a harsh chill that had him drawing the thin blanket around himself like a cocoon, and closer to midday, it got musty, a neutral temperature between hot and cold that burned the inside of his nose._

_Not that he actually slept much on the flimsy bunk, sure he laid there, but sleep was a rare commodity these days, and he was starting to feel it, feel the heaviness behind his eyes, the ache in his bones, the constant dull ache inside of his head, always changing places._

_And the slowing of his thoughts, they started out as a constant attack of guilt, anger, or whatever word he wanted to assign to them, but now it was like he was surrounded by a mountain of paperwork detailing everything that had gone wrong, everything that was wrong with him, and he was methodically going through them one by one, not for any real purpose, because he didn't have a purpose anymore, but just because he couldn't just_ not _think._

_There were a few conclusions that he had come to in just a week. One, he didn't deserve to even be in the vicinity of Lizzie, nevermind talk to her again, and two, eventually, he was going to lose his mind in this place. Hiding in the hell of his own mind could only occupy him for so long before he needed out, needed to have fresh air again, needed to not be surrounded by a prison cell._

_But right now, what he needed most was food. Unfortunately, the mousy little corrections officer who was in charge of distributing meals that week had skipped his cell. So, he was stuck sitting on his disgusting little bunk bed, wearing his disgusting bright orange outfit, and going over everything that had happened._

_Everything that had happened. He hadn't felt this much weight on his shoulders since he had lost the Pearl._

_Did she really have someone else on the side? Someone that she saw when he wasn't around? Had that person finally obtained enough of her trust so that she could stop telling him things? Had that person been told about her hospital visit before him?_

_More importantly, why the fuck hadn't he noticed? She was certainly good at pretending if it was true, and he was just in love with her enough to stop being paranoid like he was with everyone and everything else._

_Why wasn't he enough for her? Had he not listened well enough, had...maybe she had been pretending the entire time, maybe she just wanted sex from him, and was pretending about everything else..._

_Maybe it had...their first time, maybe that was all she wanted even then…_

_And he had just been too blind to see it all of these years…_

_She had been so adamant about not telling him, so defensive, and she had been pulling away slowly the entire week before that, acting distant. He had told himself that it was just because she was tired and hungry, but…_

_He felt used, like she had been an addict and he was nothing more than a drug to her, but he had finally stopped giving her the fix she needed._

_How far back did his being a problem extend? Had she wanted him gone before this, but just never told him?_

_He wanted to believe that she deserved everything he had said to her, wanted to...because if she could treat him like that, if she could throw him away like a used toy, then why should he…_

_...but she didn't deserve it. Didn't deserve any of it. He couldn't let himself believe that she did, because then she would be gone forever, and he fucking wanted her back so bad that it made him sick, both because he felt like he was a fool for it, and because some rational part of him believed that she had a reasonable excuse for not telling him about the hospital, and his entire reaction was just fucking stupid._

_But now their entire relationship was laying in pieces like a shattered window, all scattered around a floor, and he was afraid to step there, afraid to cut himself again on the glass._

_She had put him in jail, she had landed him in the one fucking place that he hated like no other, and it made it really goddamn hard to care about what she deserved, or what he deserved, or about her at all, or..._

_His brain felt like a slide projector, each slide carrying a different picture, and he was switching between them too fast to focus on one._

_The only things that were real to him were the fucking cell, the presence of the outside world, and the absolute clusterfuck of him and Lizzie, everything else in between was a cesspool of shit, designed to destroy him._

_He needed to get the fuck out of here._

* * *

When he had finished recounting everything that he could remember about that night, he took stock of her reaction, and she only looked pensive, like she was just  _thinking_  about it.

"It was like I was stuck in a void, removed from reality while I was there. I thought about a lot of shit, sitting there in that cell. Drove myself mad, almost. At first, I was fairly calm, as calm as I could get, considering, but then I started to get stir crazy, restless, after I had gone over every angle, every scenario, every facet of our relationship, of the fight, I really realized how much I hated being in there, and then I tried to get out, started trying to escape.

"The fourth failed attempt I had, they decided that I was too high risk to just leave in a cell. See, some of the prisoners were beginning to...rally to me. I'll get into that a different time, but eventually, they brought in a detective to question me. I guess they had a special interest in me or something."

* * *

_So far removed from reality, sitting in the steel chair, staring at the wall in front of him, wondering why in the fuck there was a pack of cigarettes on the table next to him, a kind of bitter anger just slithering around inside of him, like the last bit of gas in a car trapped into fighting to make the car keep running._

_The outside world seemed so far away now, she seemed so far away now, like a dream that he just couldn't recall no matter how hard he tried. Each breath he took was a chore, a struggle to force out, like there was something in his chest trying to drag each one back down._

_He didn't know if it was because the pain had become too much, or if his mind was just too tired to keep thinking about it, or if something was playing a cruel trick on him and everything would come back, every thought, every memory, like a pack of locusts._

_It didn't really matter, though, because he had shoved himself off a cliff when he had left that motel room, and he had unfortunately survived the fall, leaving a broken down version of himself that only wanted to escape, out of his own body, out of this horrible place, he wanted to keep running, off the fucking planet if possible._

_But instead, he was sitting in an interrogation room, like he was a specimen for science, and just then the door opened. He followed the movement of the person without looking up, didn't care enough to look up, watching the shadows move on the wall as they rounded the room to sit on the other side of the table was good enough._

" _Mr. Smith, I am Laurence Crenshaw. I am a detective employed by Her Majesty. I work at all of the prisons in London."_

_They had taken to calling him Mr. Smith since no one knew his actual name, and he wasn't about to fucking tell them._

" _The cigarettes are for you, to calm you down, if necessary."_

_He kept staring straight ahead, his face pulled into a tight expression, a guard._

" _...Right. I'm here to try and figure out why you are doing what you are doing, and to hopefully help you avoid incriminating yourself further."_

_The guy sounded like he had just the right type of self-righteous fuckery that pissed him off. The tone of his voice almost reminded him of James Norrington._

" _I'll start by asking you why you tried to steal the car."_

_Because if he hadn't he would have shot himself, would have run in front of a car, would have literally spontaneously combusted. Stealing the fucking car was so much more than stealing the car, it was like sticking himself on life support._

" _...it was something to do," he answered, turn his head just enough to the left to give the guy a dangerous side-eye. Short blonde hair, asshole-ish glasses, and a boring black suit._

" _And I suppose jail is something to do also?"_

" _It's not so bad."_

_The man stayed quiet except for the scratching pen on his little notepad._

" _Did...did you know the woman who called you in?"_

_That caught him by surprise, and he turned his head to look at the man with full eye contact, thoroughly intrigued, like his brain was waking up for the first time in days. "Why?"_

" _Small possibility of this being a domestic dispute-"_

" _No. I didn't know her. She must have lived in the area," he said with a tone of 'don't fucking argue with me', looking back to the wall in front of him._

_He could feel Crenshaw studying him like he was one of those pictures where you had to find the missing objects._

" _Ok. Why do you keep trying to escape?"_

_Crenshaw's jaw clenched at his answering expression, the expression of 'are you fucking stupid?'._

" _...I'm in fucking jail. Would you like being in jail?"_

" _No, I suppose not. But being in jail is the direct result of committing a crime. You seem like a smart guy."_

" _And you don't. Criminals don't normally stamp 'criminal' on their fucking foreheads, do they? I didn't plan on being in jail."_

_More scratching on the notepad. He had an urge to snatch it off the desk and read what the man was writing, but he had enough of an idea already._

" _...You have a tattoo on your right wrist. A bird. Because of the placement of the tattoo, there is a theory that it is some kind of identification marker."_

_The fucker was getting personal already._

" _And you think I'm going to tell you?"_

" _I'm a detective. It's my job to learn about someone."_

_He laughed, more of a dark snort than a laugh, and leaned back in the chair, resting his head against the cement wall, staring into the ceiling light._

" _Well, sorry to put a damper on your parade, but you're not going to learn shit about me. You're wasting your time."_

" _I think you're running from something. Or someone. And you want to leave here to keep running. Yet you are struggling with yourself to find the motivation to do anything."_

_His face stayed straight for a second before he allowed his lip to curl in a smirk, and then he turned in the chair, his entire body so that he was sitting looking at the man, satisfaction creeping into him as Crenshaw sat back in defense of his sudden intense gaze._

" _You got all that from trying to steal a car and sitting in a room with me for five minutes? Sounds like you deserve a promotion."_

" _...Maybe. I think you're lying about the woman too."_

" _Why is that?" he asked, finally opening the pack of cigarettes and extracting one._

" _The arresting officer said that you watched her for a good thirty seconds before you got in the back of his car, but didn't say anything, except "Fuck you"."_

_He blew the smoke from his first drag into the detective's face. "Did he? He has a good memory."_

" _And I have a theory. I think she was a woman that you pretended to care about, that you charmed into sleeping with you, for drugs or whatever she was going to give to you, then you packed up and ran because you're a criminal and you always run. Just this time, you didn't run far enough. She was pissed, stumbled upon you trying to steal a car, and called you in."_

_It was all he could do to not reach across the table and strangle the man with his own puke green tie. "And telling me this is going to help me avoid incriminating myself further, hm?" he growled with narrowed eyes._

_Crenshaw looked intimidated but still held his ground. "I think I know why you want to get out so bad-"_

" _I just fucking told you why-"_

" _I think you want to hurt that woman, I think you want to hurt her because you blame her for being who you are, her and all of the other women that-"_

_He never got a chance to finish what he was going to say, probably something along the lines of it not being worth it, that he could be a better man, a better member of society, before he was being pulled across the table and slammed into the wall, his fist connecting with Crenshaw's face once, twice, before the man managed to reach out and slap the emergency button. His body crumpled to the ground when he was let go, gasping._

" _...You're just like all of the other criminals...hardwired for destruction. Have fun in prison," he said, cradling his face, speaking with defeat, as though he hadn't ever thought he was going to win anyway._

_The door slammed open and two armed security guards stormed in, while he just stood there breathing heavily, a frightening anger settling itself in his chest, and then they were sticking a needle in his neck before he could react, the world fading away almost a blessing compared to absolute hell that was seemingly never-ending._

* * *

"There it is, love. I was transferred to a high-security prison because I hit a detective that suggested that I wanted to hurt you."

As if it would have been anything else. Regardless of the storm that had been inside of his head, regardless of the fight they had, the words that had been flung around, the secret she had been keeping, the  _anger_ , the insecurities, and everything in between, he had still been in love with her, drowning so deeply in the mere thought of her that if she had asked he would have burned the damn prison down just to find his way back to her. But at the time they had felt broken, like a bridge that had finally collapsed under neglect and lack of maintenance.

"And you spent three more years there?"

Though he could tell that she really wanted to ask about his thoughts in that hellhole, wanted to know more, so that she could perhaps reach into the past and soothe them, understand them, make more sense of the fight.

"Yeah, three more years. They were the longest years of my life, at least I thought then that they were. The next forty years gave Wakefield a run for its money. I could sit here and tell you for hours about all of the fucked thoughts that I entertained, the circles that I went in, but that won't help anything. At one point I even tried to convince myself that I didn't love you. A last-ditch effort to save myself, I guess. Didn't work though. Think I have a better chance of convincing myself to douse my body in gasoline and take a match to it."

That got a giggle out of her, but it was a giggle that had been taken hostage by guilt and sadness before it escaped, and it still carried shards of those with it. "How did you manage to knock four years off of your sentence?"

"I...won't go into specifics, because it is a long story that requires many smaller stories, but I cut a deal with the custodial manager. He...needed something kept quiet, something that would incriminate him. Trust me, it was nothing that I should feel guilty about helping him with. He convinced them to let me out on good behavior in September of '77. 

"While I was in Wakefield, I lost touch with reality a bit. I started getting holes in my memory, started filling them in with things, then sometimes I would play my past like a movie, thinking of you, and sometimes I would think of nothing that mattered, just thinking. But I was never really  _present_ , never alive in there, just drifting from day to day, so everything that I thought about, every decision I made, they were all worthless, because they meant nothing. It wasn't until I stepped out as a free man that everything suddenly  _meant_ something again."

* * *

_It was the smells of the world that came back first, the cool stark crispness of the air, the smell of gasoline, the smell of rain right around the corner, the smell of life._

_Then it was the solid flat plane of the ground underneath him, the wind that brushed against his face, the reminder that there was, in fact, a world outside, because he had started to wonder._

_The green of the trees, flecked with orange and yellow, the gray of the sky, like a silver blanket, even the color of his skin was different outside._

_Marveling at everything, at the fact that he was still alive, lasted for all of five minutes, before the other harsh reality stabbed him, straight in the heart._

_Lizzie was still gone, never coming back, like a balloon that he had let go into the sky, all of the pain was still there, the pain that he had caused her, the pain that she had caused him, that they had caused each other, all of the unanswered questions were still there, writhing around in his head like half-dead snakes, and he had a half a mind to march back into the prison behind him and demand that they throw him back into his cell, because he had no business being out here._

_What was the point, without her? He was certainly never going to find anyone else, didn't even want to try._

_His next thought was the demanding urge to find her, to hunt her down and smother her in kisses, but then he remembered the look in her eyes as she stood there clutching the telephone, remembered everything he had said to her, and he realized that she didn't want him back, would just send him away again if he showed up._

_She probably had found someone else by now, someone that made her happy like he couldn't. And he couldn't bear to see that, to see her with someone else. It would kill him._

_So, even though it felt like he was suffocating on his own breath, he took breaths anyway, deep breaths, and walked forwards, every step cementing the decision to stay away from her, to keep himself away from her, for her sake._

_If she was happy without him, if him not being there was what made her happy, then so be it._

_He would try to stay alive without her, as hard as it may be._

* * *

"This is the bit where I am just going to talk, and you can stop me if you have questions, but I need to get all of this out now while I still have emotional energy.

"I honestly don't know how I found the energy to go anywhere that first day. I had forgotten how to breath fresh air, but even beyond that, I had-"

He stopped when he realized that she was crying again, but she had been trying to hide it by keeping her gaze down, by blinking a little too fast. "Lizzie," he said softly, enclosing her hand with his, squeezing it. "I told you that I wasn't trying-"

"I  _know_ , but that doesn't mean that I don't feel guilty anyway. All of the pain you felt, all of those years, in the prison, and after, didn't need to exist, never needed to exist, if only that week wouldn't have happened. If I had thought for one second that you wanted me still, that you wanted me to...I would have reached out, but I buried myself under so many reasons, so many...that just the thought of seeing you again, the thought of seeing the same anger in your eyes that you had in the motel, I couldn't see it again...:"

"Lizzie," he said again, softly.

She raised watery eyes to look at him. "It's my turn still," he whispered, reaching out to swipe a tear that had found its way onto her cheek. When she nodded, he continued.

"...I had an even harder time remembering how to live without you. Before, I always had the assurance that you would come back soon, but then, the future was...so bleak without that. The anger slowly returned, but it was because I couldn't have you back, and I started to get angry with you again, angry that you had put me in prison, angry at myself for making you do it. Everything came back so strongly, like...that I couldn't take it, couldn't handle it. I didn't want to feel anymore, so…"

It had been a crushing weight, stronger than anything he had felt before, as though everything had coalesced into something much larger, and it had ripped his control away, and he had wanted to run, but before, he had wanted to run  _away_. At five in the morning three weeks after his release, when he had been laying in a motel bed, thinking about the last time him and Lizzie had made love in a hotel bed, three weeks before the fights, he wanted to run into  _nothing_ , wanted to feel  _nothing_ , because it didn't make sense to him otherwise, was a problem that he couldn't solve.

"...I started heroin. I found a dealer in the backwoods of London, paid him a little more to pretend like he had never seen me before, and he started supplying me with enough drugs to turn my feelings off for an entire year. I wish I could say that it was nice, not feeling, but it wasn't. I just felt numb after awhile.

"Eventually, I missed myself even, missed my own thoughts, missed how the world had felt without drugs, missed thinking about you, so after a year, I stopped taking it, told the dealer to fuck off, and got the fuck out of the UK.

"Mostly tried to stay out of the UK completely until I moved back, I guess I thought it would be easier to cope if I was away from the origin of the memories. I was half-right. You never left, were always in my head like...not that I minded much because at least I had you somewhere. But you were like a friend that I had left behind in a different country."

His throat was starting to get dry, and he wished that he would have thought to bring some water with. The feeling of exposure was starting to get to him too, he could feel it in the way his energy seemed to be fading slowly, like a diminishing battery. But he forged ahead anyway, knowing that she deserved to know, deserved to hear everything.

"...For a while, I just...had myself convinced that I didn't deserve to see you again, that I wasn't welcome, that...I was just setting myself up for more hurt if...or setting you up for more hurt, since...I was definitely convinced that you didn't love me, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

"Then, after a couple of years went by, once the guilt faded a little, I figured that you truly had found someone else, since I hadn't heard a word from you, not that I really  _expected_  to. I secretly hoped for it, hoped that you would reach out, but…

"I eventually made myself impossible to find even if you did want to reach out, because that was the only other alternative to drugs. To pretend like you didn't exist by distancing myself from you as much as possible. I was so convinced that I had nothing with you…

"And then all of the stuff I was doing, the less than morally right jobs I was doing, all of that shit turned into a black hole of things I would need to tell you that I couldn't tell you even if I did have something with you. Secrets I would have to keep, especially since... _well_ , everything just became an excuse to avoid facing whatever reality I would face if I tried to find you.

"At the fifteen-year mark, I hadn't exactly  _forgotten_  about you, because that would have been impossible, but I had you locked away in my head behind a door that was so fortified, so impenetrable, that it would have taken a great force to blow it open.

'That isn't to say that it couldn't be picked at, slowly worn down, which is exactly what happened. When the memories finally faded into the background, when I could think about them without feeling like they had happened yesterday, I started to take small steps back to you, started to put my stuff in places, to see if you would chase it, and when you did, I allowed myself to feel hope again, just a little bit. But I still felt like I wasn't wanted, still felt like I had permanently ruined us, so it took me until your garage for me to get that close, to finally...throw caution to the wind.

"But I chickened out. I just left a message in your car, one that you might not even make the connection with me from, and left a bead with it."

She had made a motion like she wanted to say something, so he stopped, quirking his eyebrow.

"I just...I still wish that you would have broken in. Just knowing now that you were that close. We could have been together before Mumbai, in my house, instead of a random hotel."

"I wanted to. It took every ounce of control I had to walk away, to wait for a different opportunity. Then I found out about the compass, about who had it, and that you were looking for it. So, I went to Mumbai, and trust me, I don't think I have ever been as nervous as I was that day when I texted you. I may not have looked it, but I was terrified. I was riding on the back of 44 years of the shit in my own mind.

"So that would be why I was acting like...an acquaintance rather than a friend of two centuries at first. I wanted to...not overwhelm you, or assume that I was allowed to act differently. Then I started to test the waters, started to open up bit by bit, to see how you responded. When you didn't act angry with me, when you...I let myself enjoy it, the fact that you were...but I was also incredibly confused. I went back over every theory that I had, every...and still, nothing made sense, just for different reasons.

"Then after you found out about Wakefield, after you...that night, when you asked me if I was in love with you, you sounded so frightened, so...sure that I was going to say no. It felt like...like I had the answer in front of my eyes the entire time, the most obvious answer, but also the one answer that was literally impossible to me.

"In that moment, 44 years of shit almost vanished, or at least...I don't even know, maybe it made all that time worse to think about, but a lot of stuff suddenly made sense, so  _much_  shit made sense, why you were so against telling me about the hospital, and stuff before that even, why you had sudden bouts of frustration, why you were moody at random times, why you always hated when we argued a little  _too_  much, and I almost cried that night at the sheer enormity of that reveal, that you were in love with me…"

He couldn't even go on after that. He was all talked out, just like he had been all thought out over and over again for 44 years, and she had listened through all of it, through all of his rambling. He marveled at that, that she had that much patience. Having the sudden urge to hide, he dropped his head into his hands. It only lasted for a second, before she was climbing into his lap again, pulling his hands away, and kissing him like she was trying to communicate her thoughts about everything he had said without talking.

When she finally pulled away, it was a slow gradual retreat, and he knew that she was trying to take it all in, trying to process all of it, and he also knew that it was going to take more than this night for everything to heal, for all of the shit to fully heal.

"Thank you for telling me all of that. I...I know that wasn't easy for you, love."

Her eyes held a warmth, a gratitude that made everything feel like it was okay. She always made everything feel like it was going to be okay, made all of the darkness disappear from his mind. "I'll always tell you anything you want to know, regardless."

It was an impossible thing to imagine that she would want to talk now, after the...and he was about to tell her exactly that, tell her that if she wanted, they could lay down and live in the present again, the beautiful present where all of the insecurities were far away things.

"I um...I suppose it's my turn, huh?"

Pulling her in for one more kiss, he told her the only thing he could tell her. "Only if you want to, darling."


	21. Parallax

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, chapter 21! :)
> 
> This one is called Parallax, which means:
> 
> A displacement or different in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight.
> 
> Hope everyone enjoys, and as always I love hearing reviews, and responding to them. To the unregistered user that left me several lovely reviews, thank you very much! :)

September 15th, Tuesday Night, 9 PM

* * *

Taking a deep breath, she let it out slowly so that she could feel it, feel her shoulders fall gently, feel the life inside of her. On the edge of the next inhale, she laid her head against his chest, nuzzling into it, then turned it to the side so she could listen to his heart beating, a steady sound that soothed her, reminded her that everything he had just told her was in the past, had happened a long time ago, and that he had come back to her, was still with her, still  _loved_ her.

All of that pain...it has broken her heart four, five, six times over as he had talked, explained, but she had tried to keep it in, tried to let him...but  _fuck_ , it'd been hard, so fucking hard to listen to him, had to remind herself over and over that he wasn't angry anymore, that he didn't blame her anymore, never really had. Not  _really_. And the memories, even though they were old, still felt like they had left behind remnants in her head, pieces that made it that much harder to  _know_  that they were in the past.

It reminded her of the year after he had lost the Pearl, when he had slipped into a rather deep depression, depleting his normal lively personality to replace it with something dark and a little dangerous to be around. One of the night's, only about a month after, she'd been trapped into asking about the scars on his back. She hadn't meant to stare, hadn't meant for him to notice her staring at where they used to be, and he had...guarded himself immediately, though she knew it was part of his awful mood. It had hurt then, that he had distrusted her enough to  _not_ trust her with his past.

* * *

_She was sitting in her desk chair on the Empress, her head laying in her palms, as she listened to the gentle rocking of the ship, the churning of the water outside, and the wind whistling against the window, really focusing on them as though they were the only remnants of the world that she had known a month ago._

_A month ago...when he would brighten her life in small moments with small kisses that he snuck onto her neck when the crew wasn't looking, or when they would throw sarcasm back and forth like...or when he would pull her somewhere below, or into his cabin, and push her up against the wall and kiss her until she couldn't think straight._

_When he would look at her from his spot at the helm with his eyes sparkling and the corner of his mouth turned up into a proud smirk. When they would anchor for the night and take a dip in the ocean, eventually almost always engaging in a splash fight. When he would tell her stories about the Pearl, about his childhood, about anything that fit the moment._

_The way his voice would change just for her, into a softer, more personal tone, rather than the commanding voice he used on deck, the way he would let her play with his hair when it was just her and him at night next to the railing, escalating into hands sneaking below clothing, caressing skin, his lips molding against hers, turning her steady heartbeat into a tittering thing when he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom if he was patient enough. The several times he wasn't he had just carried her to the main mast, making love to her there with hard frantic thrusts like it was the last time he would ever be inside her._

_All thirty days, as they passed, dragged on like they would never end, she hadn't seen him smile once. He hadn't kissed her, really kissed her, as she hardly counted the kisses he gave her as though he was tired of her pestering him for affection, but she had stopped that even. He hadn't made love to her, hadn't even given her an inclination that he really wanted to touch her at all. The sparkle was gone from his eyes, he walked about with no real drive to go anywhere, and being around him put her on edge like she was atop a cracked floor with the risk of it collapsing at any second. Anything he said to her was said just to get her to go away, a short "fine" or "sure" muttered in her direction without any eye contact._

_Was it her? Was she not enough for him? The niggling feeling of inadequacy had been sneaking into her thoughts every time he brushed her off or went to sleep without her, and she was starting to feel like his awful mood was bleeding into her, as though it was contagious. Had losing the Pearl caused him to take stock of his life, where he had found that she didn't have a real place in it? She wanted to shout at him that it wasn't her fault his ship had sunk, and that she had been trying to be there for him whenever he needed her, but every time an angry thought entered her head, she felt exhausted and depleted._

_It was like she was drowning, falling further and further away from him, and just one smile, one embrace, one anything from him would save her. But having him act like she was a bother was killing her, and she tried, really tried to tell herself that he would come back, that he would...but it got harder every day._

_She didn't even bother picking her head up from her hands when the cabin door opened and closed, Jack stepping through without a glance at her, going straight to the bed instead to begin undressing. Fighting the urge to look at his bare skin as belt buckles and boots hit the floor, she finally gave in and found him with just his breeches on, hands braced against her little dresser next to the bed as he leaned forward against it, eyes closed, his mouth set in a firm line._

_Her eyes traced the wiry muscle in his arms, traveled over his shoulders with a small vacation to his neck, before finally landing on his back, and was immediately reminded that there was nothing happy going on at the sudden image in her head of his lash marks. She had seen them when she had undressed him just before he had made love to her for the first time, but hadn't asked, hadn't inquired for a story about them, had been too wrapped up in the rush of finally having him._

_Just the memory of them still held an echo of the pain they must have caused him, and she subconsciously followed them from end to end where they used to be, each one like she was in some kind of trance._

" _...if you're going to ask, just...ask."_

_The sound of his voice had her head snapping to look at him, finding his eyes gazing at her, his face shadowed, and her heart spiked with sudden panic._

" _Ask?"_

_His expression didn't change, nor did the eye contact, until he pushed a small frustrated breath out of his nose and stuck the tip of his tongue out to wet his lips. "I saw you...staring."_

_Suddenly she felt uncomfortable looking at him, so she looked away, her face growing hot. "I'm sorry...I didn't mean to."_

_The only response she got was a small grunt as he pushed himself off of the dresser, spinning to drop onto the bed, sitting there for a moment before quickly stripping his breeches off and sliding under her blanket. She could see it playing out in her mind, her swaying over to the bed with him grinning at her, her straddling his body, leaning down to kiss him, to slide her hands over his chest._

_But she made no move to go to him, stayed in her chair like a statue, a blush of embarrassment still staining her skin even as he stared straight up, his hands clasped at his stomach._

_Her voice box pushed words forth without her permission just then, making her eyes widen even as she said them._

" _Why are you treating me like this?"_

_It was the first time she had directly asked him, directly questioned him about his behavior, and she waited with held breath for his reaction._

_At first, she didn't think he heard her, then his head turned to look at her, and she saw his chest rise and fall just a little faster, but he didn't say anything._

" _I have been trying...so hard to get through to you, I have given you all the space you needed, I have been understanding, I have...but you still act like...like I am a bloody nuisance! I just...what am I doing wrong? Please...I want to help you, but I can't if you don't let me…"_

_Her voice died as she tried to fight off the tears that had been culminating ever since she had seen his tears that awful night._

_The only indication she had that he had done anything was the clinking of the beads in his hair, and she dared to glance at him, finding him sitting up, staring at her._

_It was his expression that struck her. All the storminess, all the darkness that was in his eyes had bled away in a few seconds, replaced with a pure look of anguish, and then he was turning his head away from her to bury it in his hands, shaking it back and forth. It took her watching him, really watching him, to realize that he was holding back tears, the tensing of his shoulders, the trembling his body was doing, they were both signs. "I'm...sorry...I didn't even...I didn't…" he was mumbling against his hands._

_Instantly she regretted questioning him, chiding herself for making him upset when he was already heartbroken. She should have left well enough alone, should have…_

" _Lizzie…"_

_His voice was quiet, shaky, but she didn't really register that he was calling out to her through her anger at herself, didn't realize that he was looking at her again, until he repeated himself, even more quietly than the first time._

" _Lizzie, c'mere."_

_The breath that was sucked into her body barely had time to settle in her chest before she was rising from the chair, stripping away the few articles of clothing she had on as she almost ran to the bed, drawn to him by some invisible force, a noise of relief escaping her when finally, she was in his arms again, clutching him back. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you -"_

_She stopped when he shook his head before burying it in the crook of her neck, and then she went very still when the sensation of something wet touched her shoulder. Her fingers tightened on his skin, and a small gasp, barely an intake of breath, passed through her lips._

_Any notion that he might have been pulling away from her left at that moment, and she could only feather small kisses wherever she could reach while still holding him as he cried silently._

_Every doubloon that she had would be gladly wagered on the bet that she was the only person on the planet whom Captain Jack Sparrow had ever cried on, and it stole the breath from her, made her wholly unable to think past just being there for him, made her heart break again for his loss._

" _Jack...I-" she found that she didn't know what to say to comfort him, didn't know how to even start healing him, then she remembered that he thought he had no one, with the way he had acted towards her, he had thought that he wasn't allowed to ask for her comfort because there had never been anyone willing to offer it to him before her, and another piece of her heart shattered from the absolute injustice that had been done to him. "I will do...everything in my power to get you through this, I swear to you," she whispered, keeping her voice calm, delicate. "But in order for me to do that, I need you to trust me, to let me in."_

_Tears were falling down her cheeks now, hot and salty, both from the pain that she knew he was in and trying so hard to hide from everyone, and from the loss of the Pearl, for it had been her loss too, as much a piece of her life as it had been Jack's. So much had happened on that ship, so much history…_

_She pulled him even closer to her, wrapping her arms around him, still marveling at how she was the one to be here, to be holding him. "I just-" his voice suddenly came, a far cry from even the voice he used with her. This one was broken, tired, like someone had tried to shred his voice box with a knife. "That ship was my life...it was different when she was just stolen, when...but she's gone this time...forever…"_

_His bandanna was rough against her skin when he started shaking his head back and forth again, and she suddenly felt like nothing was adequate to soothe him, to save him. "I know, I know, I loved her too, but you have...so much still here for you, you have the entire world to look forward to, you have years and years, you have…" she paused, the final word getting stuck in her throat, and it came out on the edge of a whoosh of breath and a rough swallow, "me."_

_Waiting to see if he heard her, if her words sunk in enough, if by some grace of something he had gained strength from her, because she didn't know what she would do if this killed his soul forever, it was a few seconds packed into an eternity. "This may seem selfish, but I'm a pirate, so I can get away with it," she said, trying a little watery laugh against where his shoulder met his neck. "I...we need you back, all of us. As long as it takes you, take as much time as you need...we need our captain back eventually. But please, please don't shut me out again. You can come to me whenever you need me, regardless of what I'm doing. Okay?"_

_Desperately she wanted to say it, wanted to whisper it to him again and again until he got sick of hearing it._

' _I need you back because I love you so damn much that it's killing me to see you like this.'_

_But she didn't say it, couldn't say it, like it was a forbidden thing buried so deep inside of her and the world would change rotation, plants would die, oceans would empty, and this...thing between her and Jack could melt away like ice to water, change into something she no longer recognized. She was a smart woman, but even she couldn't tell what Jack...how he would take it if she told him she loved him, if he felt that way about her, or felt anything romantic for her, or to what degree...it was all so confusing, maddening, like trying to peer at something that was just too far away to make out._

_Finally, he nodded and took a deep breath. "Alright."_

_Just that, that one word, it told her that he was accepting her as the one he would go to, the one that...and that was more than enough for now. And it was enough, for now, to hold him, to be this close to him, to...and hold him she did until he finally calmed, his shoulders loosening, his body relaxing, and a long wistful sigh escaping him. "Lizzie...I...I didn't mean to...make you feel unwanted...I just...don't really know how to ask for...someone to...to…" he stopped, clenching his hands at his inability to explain himself. Thankfully, she understood and shifted gently to see if he was ready to move. When his arms tightened around her, it took her a moment to realize that he was hugging her, and then he was moving away so that she could see his face._

_The only remnant of his tears was the slight redness of his eyes and a bit of smudged kohl. "I'm sorry, love," he said again, keeping his gaze south._

" _Jack, you have nothing to be sorry for, just...just lie back," she said, pushing on his chest with the heel of her hand. When he complied, she arranged herself so she was settled along the length of his body, her right leg hooked over him, her hand drawing circles on his chest, and her head resting against his shoulder, reminding her of their time on the rum runner's island. "You didn't do anything wrong," she tried again. "It's the people who made you think that you need to get through everything alone that were wrong."_

_She didn't get a response, at least not a verbal one, but she hadn't expected to, had only wanted him to hear those words, to understand them. Heaving a great sigh, she settled closer to his warmth, already feeling the absence of the weight that had settled into her soul without him, and raised herself up a bit on her elbow to engage in one of her favorite things to do._

" _Are you ever going to get tired of playing with my hair?"_

_Fingering one of the beads, she found his smokey eyes staring at her in amusement, a barely-there smile teasing the corner of his mouth. "Unlikely. I always feel like I am going to find new beads or something in it. It's like a discovery game."_

_His dark eyes held her gaze for a moment before he turned away. "They were from my father, by the way. The-the lash marks."_

_It was said without preamble, without any real emphasis, but she knew that he was placing a great deal of trust in her with every bit that he revealed about himself, and this particular bit of information made her eyes widen at him and her blood run like ice. "He did that to you? Without punishment?"_

" _I was fourteen," he started again, turning back to look at her, his hand disappearing into her hair to play with it as it fell down her back. "Don't quite remember what I did, but it was something that apparently disrespected him. Probably questioned him on something. In any case, it was a long time ago, the marks are gone, and there is no reason to dwell on it, savvy?"_

_She didn't feel like there wasn't a reason to dwell on it because no man should torture his son without retribution, but she would put it aside for now._

" _Thank you for telling me," she murmured, settling her head back against his shoulder, suddenly feeling rather sleepy, and content to fall asleep due to where she was at that particular moment, nestled against her love, even though that love was still a secret._

* * *

It had been one more peg on their long journey to where they were now. One more notch of trust, one more story to tell, one more... _well_ , that wasn't even the part of the past she was supposed to be thinking about.

When he realized that she was taking a small break, he wound his arms around her and threaded one hand in her hair, sneaking the other hand under her loose tank top to rub it over her back in lazy circles. "I know that was a lot to take in, love. I also know that there will never be any clear answers or take-aways from all of this. It just...feels better to talk about it rather than treat it like something we need to fear. Face it head on and all that, you know?"

Rather than answer him, she just nodded against him, slipping her hands under his shirt too, clutching his back like she was afraid he was going to vanish. "Are you sure you want to keep going?"

 _No_ , she really didn't, she wanted to lay down on the bed and feel his body against her and let him kiss her until she fell asleep, she wanted to stay in the present where they were together, where everything was okay, where the kind hand of fate had righted their world despite every single obstacle they had faced to get there, but this was  _reality_ , and despite not being able to find clear answers to everything, they still had to try. Just a little more, just...then they could fall asleep together and begin their new life as a couple, and a smile flashed across her face at the thought, a whispered " _what_?" against her hair from Jack.

"Nothing, just every time I remind myself that we're a thing now, I feel...all giddy and mushy inside."

She could feel his mouth quirk against her, a little twitching of his lips. "A... _thing_?"

"Yeah, you  _know_ ," she giggled. "A thing, a couple, boyfriend and girlfriend,  _together_ , dating, going steady if we're talking about the 50's,  _bae_  if we take the unfortunate turn into awful modern slang, in a relationship... _well_ , you get the idea."

As each new synonym left her mouth, his snickering turned into chuckling, which turned into laughing, which turned into his body trembling as he tried to hold in laughter. "Going steady  _was_  a nice term," he said once he got himself under control. But even through the teasing, she knew that he didn't, in any sense, take them being together lightly, and it warmed her heart how much  _peace_  it created within him, just like it made her feel like she was floating.

But right now, she had to bring herself back to the moment when he had slammed the motel door, when she had collapsed on the carpet for the second time, and stepping back through that hole, back into that  _other_  world of anger, of...but it had to be done. She laid her forehead back onto his chest, speaking quietly like she didn't want to give the words she was about to say any more strength than they deserved.

"I suppose I will start just after you...left, if I can...I felt, and I'm just telling you how I felt in the moment, this is not what I truly...I felt  _angry_  at you, because I thought you didn't care, I thought that...it didn't occur to me at first that you didn't even hear what I had said really, I just...all I could focus on was how you just brushed it off. And it confirmed my fear, at least then, that you didn't care about me that way, that I was right for keeping it a secret. I just felt so  _awful_."

* * *

_Pain shot up her arm and her skin flamed when she slammed her fist into the disgusting carpet, her scream blending with the pouring rain outside. The aching had set in a long time ago, but she didn't really know how long she had been there, her legs folded under, her knees touching her breasts, her head pushed into the floor, except for the few times she had arched up as a fresh round of sobs were ripped from some unfathomable reserve._

_The sound of the door slamming was still reverberating in her ears, and all she could think was that she was glad he was gone, she screamed it in her head, had even screamed it once out loud, and she thought she meant it, thought that him leaving was the best thing that had ever happened to her._

_That look in his eyes as he had left, not unlike the way a soldier might look at a traitor, it was so cold, so real...he really didn't care, and it felt like an ice pick was being driven into her heart, because even through all of her doubt, through all of her insecurity, fear, whatever word was to be assigned to it, the hope that he cared, that he loved her, was in love with her, really understood her, it had always been there, underneath all of that._

_But now, as lightning flashed in her head, as her skull throbbed and twisted with pain, as it felt like acid has been injected into the skin of her face as it strained and stung from her sobs, as her eyes burned with how tightly they were squeezed shut, it felt like her world had been turned upside down, felt like the very fabric of her universe was torn in two, and she didn't know what life meant anymore, didn't know how to live, was doubting whether there would even be a world outside if she were to open the door._

_She kept seeing his eyes swimming in front of her, kept seeing the money float through the air, and the words he had said, 'good luck. Maybe you'll find a different fuck buddy that's willing to put up with your bullshit', were echoing around her head like some kind of broken recording meant to torture her into oblivion._

_Finally, with the same speed of a bullet being fired from a gun, the anger took hold of her, possessed her, made her brain start on fire, and she couldn't think past it, didn't even want to think past it as her body shot up, her muscles screaming in protest. It was the bathroom that she ran to first as the urge to hit something pulsated in her fist, and a ragged cry did fly out of her mouth when she slammed it into the side of the counter, then did it again, ignoring the pain, but it wasn't good enough, wasn't…_

_Her arm snapped through the air, and she watched almost maniacally as pieces of the mirror exploded in every direction, then she dropped, twisting to land in a heap with her back to the cupboards, her head bent to her knees, and her left hand clutching her bleeding right one, the tears only coming harder, but now, they were anger-less, instead filled with emotions that she no longer had the strength to identify as the world fell away, becoming something else, an abstract thing that she no longer cared if she were a part of it or not._

* * *

As she explained, he had been touching her everywhere, running his fingers over the small slice of skin that her shirt kept revealing every time she paused to take a breath, over her neck under her hair, kissing the top of her head, then when she finished, he wrapped his hand around her right one and brought it to his mouth, laying soft kisses on her knuckles with a pained expression on his face. "I don't care what the situation is, don't, and I mean  _don't_   _ever_  hurt yourself over me again. Do you understand that?"

"...Yes...that  _was_  the only time I have ever done damage to myself out of anger or any other emotion. Rather telling, I suppose. The...um, the rest of the night I just...sort of drifted in and out of consciousness, at one point I made it to the bed, but I was kind of numb, until I finally just had to get out of the damn motel room, so I left, and well, you know where I went…"

His chest collapsed in a heavy exhale, as though he was both dreading this and waiting for it.

* * *

_It was cold enough for her breath to twist and turn in the air, cold enough for the rain coming down to feel like tiny bullets against her skin as she climbed out of the car, leaving it parked a few blocks from the lot where the GT was._

_Twigs and leaves crunched under her feet but she didn't really focus on them, couldn't let her brain feel anything sensory, anything too much, because then it would remind her too much of the hell that her life had become in just a few hours, just a couple of hours everything had changed._

_He hadn't come back, and she felt empty, like a starved person, like a person who had too much blood drawn from her body, like a person who had too many nightmares while they slept, leaving them feeling heavy with exhaustion. She kept closing her eyes and shaking her head as though she had bugs crawling in her brain, as though she had to fight to keep herself on this plane of existence._

_Every time a car sped by, every time a horn blared in the distance, even the crunching under her feet that she was trying to ignore, they were all so loud, so much louder than they should be, but maybe it was her thoughts that were quieter, maybe it was herself that was retreating into the ether, away from the world, magnifying everything around her as though the world was trying to fill the void left behind by Elizabeth Swann, like she was a tree that had been wiped out by a sudden meteor that had come crashing down to earth._

_Little hot spikes of anger, like the leftover simmering coals of a fire, were still there in her brain, still threatening to take over again, threatening to turn into a raging wildfire at a moment's notice, at just enough of a push towards that pit, but she ignored it too, focused only on picking up her feet and putting them down, walking in a straight line, not thinking about the anger in his eyes, or the panic in her voice, or the the slamming of the door, or the way the mirror had shattered like a beautiful crystal destroyed by the cruel reality of the universe, or the way she had sat on the bathroom floor and cried, losing touch with time and space until she rose like a zombie and ended up in the car._

_Didn't think about the heaviness behind her eyes, didn't want to think about how everything she had felt, all the anger, was probably wrong, was probably...didn't want to think about any of it, didn't want to think about how her life had been almost perfect before, like a pretty house on a warm summer day in the Caribbean right on the coast of the ocean, only to be destroyed by the devastating winds of a hurricane, uncaring about what was in it's path, whether it be a house or a love that was meant to endure, meant to last forever, meant…_

_Then the cruel reminder that he hadn't known that she loved him, still didn't know, would never know now, because he was gone forever, gone from her life, blown away...not that there had ever really been anything for the hurricane in that motel to fucking destroy anyways, there was nothing between them, nothing to...so why in the fuck did she feel like she was walking around dead, like her very life force had been taken from her...didn't want to admit it, didn't want to admit that he was the thing that kept her going, he was the life inside of her, didn't want to admit that she had an equal share in driving him away, didn't want to admit to anything, nothing, hated him, hated everything about him…_

_His stupid smile, the way he would sneak a look at her from across the room that...the way he made love to her, the way he would whisper in her ear, the way he would hold her, the way...none of it fucking mattered anymore, it was all stained like she had spilt ink on it and left it._

_A big lit-up billboard had been filling up the left side of her vision as she walked towards the lot, getting bigger and bigger, and she had been able to make out red letters as she glanced at periodically, but could only just now see what it was, and if it wasn't a fucking cruel twist of the universe she didn't know what was, asking her if she had found the right person yet, telling her to sign up for some fucking dating site…She didn't even have the energy to care, just laughed bitterly, some of the rainwater finding its way into her mouth. It tasted polluted._

_Rounding the corner of the building, some kind of apartment, she saw the car, still sitting there, the black paint picking up every color of the city, shining in the collected water, and then with a jolt like lightning down her spine she realized there was someone there, next to the car, someone knelt there, someone...they had long hair...they were…_

_Their face angled at just the right degree to catch the light of the streetlamp above, but she had known...known it was him the entire time, and the light illuminating his face took her breath away for just a moment, a fleeting moment that was suspended above everything else, then like ice freezing over her heart, the anger returned, slammed into her like a speeding train, the sound roaring in her ears, the blood rushing through her body._

_Had he known? Had he known that she wanted that car the entire time? Why was he so fucking adamant about knowing her secrets if he was keeping secrets of his own?_

_Then the ice turned into boiling lava, infecting her with a deep burning desire to hurt, to punish, to lash out at everything and anything, but to him especially as her brain replayed the money falling to the ground, the cold in his eyes, the harshness of his voice…_

' _...Should have never saved you…'_

' _...Not sure you deserved it…'_

' _...Should have left you in Russia…'_

' _...Maybe you aren't worth being trusted…'_

…

_He wasn't fucking worth being trusted, she wasn't sure he deserved her, and she felt her face grow hot from the thought, from the searing fall, from the tumble into the black hole of the unknown, into a world where she wanted to get him as far away from her as she could, even though she couldn't remember the reasons why, couldn't remember anything...except that he didn't care about her, didn't care that she had lost the only other dream besides being with him that she had, didn't love her, had never loved her…_

_...she was tumbling into a world where he was a stranger to her, in that moment, a stranger that was betraying her, crossing the line...taking something of hers, but he already had her heart in a stranglehold, already commanded her thoughts, whether she hated him or not, so what was left for him to take?_

_Suddenly she was yanking open the door of the telephone booth down the sidewalk, the rain making the glass fog, running down the sides of it like a sad waterfall, and then the plastic of the phone was cold in her hand as she lifted it out of the receiver, clutching it so hard that her muscles hurt, fighting the urge to smash it into the glass, and only noticing that her hand was shaking, trembling, when she brought it to her ear._

_Sending all of the rage that was squirming inside of her at him, glaring at his head, almost willing him to look, to see, she smashed the button down, three times, each time feeling like another nail in their coffin._

_9-9-9_

_Then it started to ring, and she didn't even listen to the dispatcher ask her what the problem was, she just blurted out in a strangled voice that a man was trying to steal a car in the parking lot, then stumbled through the address, then stuck the phone back on the receiver like it was poison and turned around, finally letting the angry tears fall, feeling her life spiral out of control, feeling the strength leave her legs._

_He deserved this, he deserved to get arrested, to understand how much he had hurt her. No doubt he wouldn't see the inside of a jail cell, there was no way in hell they could get that far with him, but at least he would know…_

_She didn't know how much time had passed until the flashing lights of the police car lit up the parking lot, didn't even realize she had stepped out of the booth until the rain started pelting down on her again...didn't know why she was watching, didn't understand as the anger receded enough to see the other side...didn't understand why she hated seeing him get pushed up against the car, hated seeing the handcuffs going around his hands, felt the regret battling with the rage like…_

_TIme stopped when he raised his head, when his eyes met hers, when the shock flashed across his face, and a strange urge to reach out to him, to turn back everything to the motel, to comfort the hate out of his eyes that was pouring out at her now, and then she heard his voice, an angry whisper._

' _Fuck you.'_

* * *

All she could do was just concentrate on her breathing, concentrate on how to explain, how to make him understand the terrible twisting guilt in her heart over what she had done.

"I just...there's nothing I can say that will take away how horribly impulsive it was...but in that moment, I felt so much...emotion, so much anger, that I had to find a way to let it out, to...I don't even know if I was really targeting you, I was just  _targeting_...I didn't think far enough ahead, or beyond, to wonder about the consequences. I could barely think about what I was doing at all. I slept in the booth, for a little while. After the cop drove away. Don't remember falling asleep there, just remember waking up early in the morning.

"I didn't feel angry anymore, not sure if it was because I wasn't angry, or if I had just exhausted my capacity to  _feel_ , but I made my way back to the motel, and slept some more, kind of half-sleeping, drifting in and out with the hope that maybe you would be back each time I woke up.

"It hadn't even occurred to me that you were gone, that everything was permanent, far more permanent than I could process. Then when you didn't come back, I actually went back to take the car, and drove it back, got my shit, and drove back to the place in London that we normally use as a safe house, that abandoned house, in the hope that you would go there too. Stayed there for two weeks, just hiding, moving from one room to another, day after day, fighting a maelstrom of emotions sometimes, sometimes not feeling at all…

"It was that Sunday, at the end of the second week, that I started to be afraid, afraid that you really were gone, and then everything came back, the motel, the fight, everything, only this time, I saw how wrong everything was, and a million 'if only I hadn't said that' flooded me, so much regret, so much...but even through seeing everything as it was, even through all of that, I still battled with whether you cared, because of what you had said, battled with whether you…

"I thought about trying to find you, really thought about it, but every time, the only thing I felt was fear, fear that you would only send me away, that you would hammer another nail into the coffin by acting like you didn't want me if I showed up, the fear consumed me, blinded me to reason, to any other thoughts. I was just so shattered by everything, I felt so small, so powerless…"

The emotion threaded through her throat rendered her speechless for a moment, and all she could do was glance up at him as though seeing his face would return her mental fortitude.

"I didn't take any jobs for a year," she continued, trying to control the wobble in her voice. "I just kind of moved around from place to place, fighting my own mind, trying to...stop feeling and trying to keep feeling at the same time, it was like the only thing that could keep me alive was no longer within my grasp, and I had entered some kind of emergency power state, where my mind only half worked, a slave to anxiety, paranoia, and so many things that I can't even put a name to…

"I had a strange...moment of clarity a year afterward, where I was able to gather my thoughts enough to have something coherent to put down on paper. Hang on a moment, I have pictures of it on my phone."

* * *

_It was gloomy, a dull gray mood that seemed to permeate everything around her. Even the seagulls pecking at the ground in front of her didn't look like they were enjoying themselves. Having just checked her watch, she knew it was only two in the afternoon, but the atmosphere around her made it feel closer to evening, precarious and unknown._

_There was a slight bite to the wind, just a slight chill that only bothered her if it found just the right angle to slip under her windbreaker, and she had lost count of how many times she had unconsciously pulled the jacket tighter around her body, just like she had lost count of how many times she had nearly dumped her notebook and pencil on the concrete from forgetting that it was in her lap._

_She wasn't even sure why she had brought it out here because the motivation to write in it was slipping away and coming back with the same consistency as the sun through the thick blanket of gray clouds above her. She wasn't sure why she was where she was, Copenhagen, either, wasn't sure why she was awake, certainly wasn't sure why she...well, such depressing thoughts didn't hold much weight to her anymore, as common as they were._

_There was a coffee shop across the street, and it was most likely warm in there, and no doubt she could head over right now and sip down a steaming cup of dark roast, but she had trudged all the way out to this damn pier, overlooking the Nordhavn basin, and dammit she was going to stay here out of pure stubbornness, or lack of caring, but she wasn't really sure which it was._

_The ocean here was vastly different to the crystal turquoise waters of the Caribbean. There, the water almost invited you to come in, made you feel peaceful inside, but here, the dark choppy water of the Baltic Sea gave you a sense of foreboding, where if you stared at it for too long, something might draw you into the depths._

_Briefly she wondered how the notebook would look as it sunk, how long it would take for it to be invisible to her eyes, and then banished the thought, remembering that she had told herself as she stepped out the motel that she was staying in that she was going to write this fucking letter whether her mind, hand, or mood liked it or not._

_But the entire time she had been sitting there on the bench, diving through the question mark that the last year had been, all she could do was stare out into the world, tracing the horizon line with her eyes. Being quite frank with herself, she was teetering on the line, had been teetering on the line for the entire year, between a full mental breakdown and a completely flippant attitude about everything as a coping mechanism for how fucked her life was. She rarely cared about her appearance anymore, only pausing for a moment to drag a brush through her hair and make sure she actually had clothes on. Really, she just lacked the focus and effort to put much thought into anything she did lately, so trying to remember everything that her brain was doing its damndest to forget, and failing miserably, leaving everything a cross between a partially destroyed tape and going back in time to view the memories as though they were happening at present…_

_Trying to remember all of that and summarize it in her mind was proving to be a far greater challenge than she had thought, and she couldn't decide if that was the source of her slumping forward nearly falling asleep, or if it was just the gloom wearing on her. Probably the former, she figured._

_Taking a deep breath of chilly air, nearly coughing as it stung a section of her throat into a maddening tickle, she pressed the pen to the notebook, getting as far as scribbling a jagged trail on the first line. Glaring at for longer than probably necessary, she didn't turn the page to start anew, just skipped down to the next line with an attitude to just let come what may come._

**_Jack,_ **

_It's been a year. Wow, what a great way to start a letter, stating something that is blatantly obvious just by looking at a calendar. Probably the only obvious thing right now in the world, my world anyway, in any case. It really has been a year though, hasn't it? Strange, I can't decide if it has flown by or if I just didn't notice how slow it was passing. A year, 365 days, a much bigger number in hours, even bigger in minutes, and astronomical in seconds._

_I am sitting here trying to write...this, trying to figure out WHAT to write, really, and since I can't think of anything, I'll just describe where I am. Somewhere that you never liked, Copenhagen. Then again, you were never built for anywhere cold, always making sure to remind me of the fact every five minutes when we were somewhere cold. More specifically, I am sitting on a bench that surely needs a little bit of repair (it leans down too far on one side, and it wobbles), on the Langelinie Pier. Interesting fact, it's home to the Little Mermaid statue. You know, the fairytale written by Hans Christen Andersen? Apparently, it has been the victim of vandalization. Poor thing._

_Before this, I was in Dublin enjoying some of their excellent beer, and before that, I was in a little town in Transylvania contemplating whether I wanted to try and break into Bran Castle (apparently known as Dracula's Castle, but I don't think that Vlad the Impaler really lived there). I decided against it in the end, as I was too underwhelmed by the thought of doing it alone. Before that..._

_Ah, you probably don't care where I have been anyways since there is nothing terribly exciting about my travels as of late. Haven't taken any jobs, haven't even tried looking for any, haven't stolen anything at all actually. Lacked motivation, I guess, for anything besides eating, sleeping, and, well...I wonder if it is a symptom of immortality...sudden lulls in the will to live._

_Is that a terribly depressing thing to say? Not exactly surprising for me to write something depressing, since I haven't been sleeping well for...I wish I could say just a few days, but really for the last year (it really has been a year!), I can't remember the last time I got a full night's sleep. I always wake up, sometimes just once, sometimes several times, and I feel the sheets, just paw around, I don't even know why anymore, but at first it was to see if you might be there, sleeping next to me. Now I think it is just a habit, like a reflex. I have been having strange dreams too, all like...of the past, of us, of the Pearl, of...a lot of things._

_A bit torturous, thinking of us while awake and dreaming of us while asleep, but I don't know if you would know anything about that with the way you left. You know, I should probably scribble that out, reading it over just as I wrote it, but I'm not going to, as this letter has been taking on a stream of consciousness style anyway, and sometimes angry little thoughts like that enter my consciousness, out of the blue, like a dolphin suddenly breaching the water._

_Look at me, trying to write like a poet, rather fitting since poetry is just putting rather awful human stories into nice pretty frames, using nice pretty words. Though, I think even the greatest poet would find it a challenge to fancy up me calling the police on you. What do you think? Should I resurrect John Keats and stick the challenge to him? Perhaps he could make what you said to me sound nice too, but I doubt it._

_I...I should scribble that out too, because in the last year, I have...come to the conclusion that you were just angry, that you certainly didn't mean any of it, and...well of course you didn't mean any of it you tosser, at least, I bloody hope you didn't. But...it's been a year, and you haven't been around, so maybe...even if you didn't REALLY mean what you said, maybe you meant to make it sound like you wanted to leave me...because that's what it sounded like. And the look in your eyes when you...when I told you...it still haunts me, still the one thing that drives me to get drunk every other night._

_But even besides all of that, what I did to you, calling the police, that must have been enough to drive you away, huh? Another betrayal, borne out of a stupid silly angry impulse that I regretted the second I woke up in that piece of shit smelly telephone booth. But I couldn't bear for you to yell at me again...see, I had never heard your yelling directed at me before, not that you ever yelled much to begin with, but...it traumatized me, I think. Every time anyone raises a voice around me...not that I am saddling you with the accusation that you have damaged me, I don't...think that...it's just all so confusing, isn't it?_

_It all comes back to one thing though...why couldn't I have just told you to begin with? Looking back, it really wasn't that big of a secret, wasn't that...big of a deal, not nearly as big of a deal as I made it out to be. I should have just told you._

_Then, I am reminded of why I didn't, and reminded of the root thing behind that, behind...well, a lot of things. And I figure that saying it blatantly is the best way. No use being afraid of it now. I didn't tell you because I was so bloody afraid of finally crossing the line from not knowing to the confirmation that you weren't in love with me that I ran in every other direction besides that one._

_I guess there is a confession hidden within that. I'm in love with you, Jack, still am, sitting here on an ocean pier in Copenhagen with my silly little notebook and silly pen, a year later, after the worst fight we have ever had, I am still bloody in love with you, you damn blackguard, infuriating man, pirate. You must find me pathetic, being so damn sad over you, being so...weak, but I honestly don't give a damn. The world can go to the devil if it defines this as being weak._

_I fucking miss the shit out of you, dammit. I miss...and now I just got the treatment in my head of a projector possessed by Satan, too many images, too many things to miss, but I'll try to list them here. I miss the way your hair felt in my hands, the way you would chuckle, your different chuckles...I miss the way you would whisper at me when you lay inches away from me in bed...the way you would pull me close to you early in the morning...I miss the way you still look at the ocean, the way you still talk about ships…(remember that one time you were admiring that aircraft carrier and I suggested we steal it, and you looked at me like I was crazy?), I miss the way you grumbled about the cold, the way you seemed right at home in scorching hot weather, your smile, whether it be that damnable smirk of yours or the beautiful genuine smile you gave me when...I miss your touch, I miss making love to you, I miss touching you...I_ _really_ _miss making love to you...haven't had anyone else since...I think I might lose my mind. Touching myself isn't anywhere near the same, even if I think about you, which I do…_

_I miss the way you would always whisper to me about how 'fucking idiotic' men that you didn't like were...usually when we were in bars or somewhere populated. I miss you trying to scare me at every opportunity, mostly when we are in dark silent places, I miss the way you held me like you were trying to protect me from everything bad in the world, I miss how you would hold me after making love, how you would cradle me and keep kissing me, like you were worshipping me…_

_Is that a long enough list? Is that enough to make you come back? To understand how much I miss you, how much I love you? I...don't bloody know what else to say, and this letter is unraveling rather quickly, isn't it? A preview of what I have to look forward to without you I suppose...my world unraveling string by string until there is nothing left...not even that little piece of lint left behind in a shirt pocket. But...you don't want me back do you? Not after what I did, after...after the Kraken, I always knew that you wouldn't put up with another betrayal, but I bloody fucking went and did it anyway, called the cops on you, and I didn't even really want to do it, had I just thought about it for one fucking second I would have run up to you and clung to you until you got tired of being nearly squeezed to death…._

_I have been waiting for you to come back, I have been waiting for you to...but you never did. I_ _t's been a year and nothing. I was never one to...intrude on you unless you allowed it, so I won't do that this time. I...I'm not going to chase you like...only because I fear that would drive you away even further than I already have...being followed around by someone who is incapable of letting go...you never seemed like you wanted any attachment to anything besides your ship anyways._

_I will leave you alone for as long as I can, you personally I mean, I'm sure I will gravitate to every possible reminder of you on this earth for the rest of my life._

_I love you, love you so fucking much that I think it might even crush the regard I have for myself, and I am not even ashamed to admit that. But I understand now that I may have been living with a terribly cruel false hope that you returned the feeling. Silly me right?_

_Your forever love,_

_~~Lizzie~~ **Elizabeth**_

_A few of the words had been steadily bleeding away into something unintelligible with the teardrops that were falling, but it didn't matter because she wasn't going to send it, had no clue where to send it to, and even if she did, wouldn't do it anyway because she would be too terrified to read the reply. Of course, she had known that when she started writing but had become so wrapped up in just the idea of talking to him that she had…_

_Slapping the notebook closed in frustration, dragging a hand across her face to wipe the tears away, she weighed the options between drowning herself in the ocean, and drowning herself in a cup of coffee, only choosing the coffee out of pure survival instinct alone._

* * *

She had often wondered what his reaction would be if he ever read that letter, and her theories had changed as more years had passed, but nothing could have prepared her for the way his hand trembled, the way his breathing came faster, the way he was still looking at the phone, but not  _really_  looking at it. It reminded her of the way military wives and mothers held the letters telling them that their spouses or children were deceased.

"Do you-" and he threw the phone down onto the bed, covering his face with his hands, rubbing them up and down in frantic motions, a long heaving breath escaping out between his fingers.

"...Funny, isn't it, surviving bullets and knives, only to be done in by a letter," was what he finally chose to say behind his hands after almost five minutes of silence, then continuing before she had a chance to get a word in, looking at her this time. "That... _that_ , if that had ever been sent to me, if I had seen that, at any point in the last four decades before Mumbai, darling, I would have  _invented_  teleporting to come back to you, if I managed to live through reading it, that is. The only reason I lived through it now is that you're here  _with_  me."

It was all said in a low cracked whisper, like he wasn't sure if he was going to be able to speak, but went ahead anyway, and it took her a moment to collect her thoughts as well.

"...I wrote more, they were shorter, but I did write more. In that notebook, in fact. But they were damaged along with the photos, except for this one. That's mostly why I took a picture of it eventually, was afraid of it getting damaged or losing it. They were one of the few things keeping me sane, I think, writing them. Kind of like I was talking to you, and maybe somewhere in my head I harbored a hope that I  _would_  one day send them to you."

He smiled a little bit, but it wasn't a happy smile, nor was it really a sad smile, more a smile that was taking the place of a million emotions simmering just below the surface; a  _masking_ smile. "And to think, I spent all those years thinking...that you didn't want  _me_ back."

Her eyes followed his movement when he grabbed the phone again, scrolling up and down as though he was searching for something. When he apparently didn't find it, he deactivated the screen and set the phone down. "I hope you realize that everything you say in there about me not wanting-"

" _Of course_  I realize that now at least, now that I have stopped being an idiot, now that you have stopped being an idiot," she said, smiling softly at him. "But back then, my personal torture didn't stop at letters. Oh no, I graduated to something much more potent than simply talking about you and to you with ink. The first time, when I had finally started taking jobs again, six or seven years later I think, I was in Jamaica, not stealing anything physical, just gathering information for someone."

* * *

_The job was over, she had reported the information, nothing was keeping her here now._

_At least, that's what she liked to tell herself, had been telling herself the entire week she had been in Jamaica. She had avoided coming here for exactly the reason that she was having such a hard time staying away from, made more difficult by the fact that she knew it was vacant, knew that he wasn't there._

_Some days, she could semi-successfully block him out, until she would see the most precise shade of red, or the dark shade of kohl, or hear a song that he had liked, or even glance at the ocean, or get a look of a rum bottle, or find an assortment of men's rings in a shop…_

_There were a million reminders littered everywhere, all triggering an automatic response of_ him _, inside of her head, followed by everything she remembered about him, followed by everything she didn't want to remember about_ them _, and it left her feeling sapped of energy every time._

_It was like she was standing on a mountain of things, higher than Everest, things that she just kept burying, and eventually, her foot was going to slip and she was going to go careening down the edge of it, catching every sharp jagged rock on the way down until she lay dead at the bottom, killed by her own mind._

_But it wasn't for that reason that she had avoided going there, to his cabin on the beach, no, it was for an entirely different reason, almost. If she stepped foot in there, she would feel something akin to euphoria, being that close to him, and it would last for a glorious minute, or several minutes, or maybe even several hours, but eventually her mind would succumb to the harsh reality that it was only a cabin, filled with ordinary things, not him, because it was only him that could truly cure her ailment, not inanimate objects._

_Sometimes her mind refused to listen to even the most reasonable excuses, never mind the not so reasonable ones, because the thrill of opening the door, of revisiting it, it was intoxicating to her, almost like somewhere inside, she wanted to spiral downwards in a storm of nostalgia, love that was starting to border on pain, even mixing with it, and memories, so many memories in that damn cabin._

_So, the fact that she was currently trudging down the sandy path to the place came as no surprise to her, even as she chided herself for doing it. Even as it came into view, a handsome little cabin, with black wood and big windows and a charming little porch, with a lovely staircase that wound down to the beach, which itself had some lovely rock formations, a little cave, and a hidden lagoon, she knew that she was only going to end up hurting herself, regardless of how good it felt at first._

_Though that was how love almost always worked, wasn't it?_

_When she arrived on the step just before the door, she raised her hand to pick at her mouth, looking around as though she was trying to find a last-ditch excuse not to go in. Finding nothing, she lurched forwards, twisting the doorknob, shock shooting up her spine when it yielded to her without resistance. Had he left it unlocked?_

_That mystery was rendered utterly insignificant when she crossed the threshold, and then just stood there, at a loss for a moment._

_He had been here, very recently, and had apparently left in a hurry, because he had left some things behind. She could just picture him rushing around, shoving a few things in a bag, jamming his pistol into the back of his trousers, making sure to grab his cigarettes…_

_Except those were on the little table next to the couch. Very much in a hurry then…_

_There was a bottle of Captain Morgan sitting on the kitchen counter, and normal people might have a few tumblers sitting next to it, but Jack had never changed his ways with rum, always drinking it straight. He also had a pair of trousers thrown next to the couch, some cash of various currencies sitting on one of the cushions, and curiously, a camera hanging on the door to the little pantry._

_Walking over to the fridge, she opened it to peer inside, finding only an unopened case of beer, an expired pack of lunch meat, a loaf of bread, and some mustard, ketchup, and barbecue sauce._

_Never did she think that seeing his normal sandwich ingredients would make her feel emotional, but here she was, tears stinging at her eyes, making her feel like an idiot all over again._

_In the bathroom, she found a razor, an empty pill bottle without a prescription tag on it, and some shaving cream. What sort of pills was he taking?_

_Finally, she arrived at the bedroom, her true destination in this cabin, if she was being honest with herself. Opening the door, she was hit with a blast of nostalgia, remembering that due to the lack of windows except for the small one in the right corner, this room had always been darker than the rest of the cabin. Standing there in the middle, she glanced back to the door, before reaching out to push it closed, cementing her decision right then and there._

_Stripping out of her clothes and laying them in a little pile next to the bed, she wasted no time climbing in, enjoying the feel of the deep red satin sheets against her skin, and then made a noise of overwhelming relief, of finally reuniting with something, with...this was the closest to him that she had gotten...since._

_She tried to bury herself as far into the bed as she could get, smushing her face into the pillow and taking a deep breath, feeling both silly and not caring if she was being silly when she felt giddy at the smell of him there, everywhere in the bed actually, a mix of cologne, rum, and his own spicy scent, and following the giddiness was a spike of sorrow, felt so acutely that it stole her breath, because the torture of being this close, being surrounded by the markers of his presence, yet being so reminded of his absence, was suddenly excruciating, and she dug her fingers into the mattress in a desperate attempt to release the tension._

_Images intruded of the way he would push her hands into the bed as he assumed just the perfect amount of control over her, thrusting into her body with hard, deep strokes, before slowing to gentle languid movements as he would lean down to pepper her neck with soft kisses...sometimes when he was feeling impatient he would just bend her over the foot of the bed and slide inside from behind, bringing her to a frenzied fever pitch climax, his release never far behind._

_Just the thought of the way that they had made love in this bed made her feel like she had climaxed in the present, made her body prickle with heat, made her feel heavy and sated, and her eyes slipped closed, her hand finding its way down to the blanket to pull it over her, and in her last moments of consciousness before she fell asleep, she pretended that he was here, holding her, snuggling against her, giving her center one last caress before sleep took them, just like it was claiming her now, the first somewhat peaceful sleep she had in a long time._

* * *

While she had been telling him about the cabin, the bit about the bed reminded her that she was currently sitting in a bed, and decided that she would rather be laying in a bed, and that is exactly what she had done, stretching out gratefully. Jack was propped up on his elbow next to her, playing with a piece of her hair just as she finished the story.

"So  _that's_ why I felt like something was out of place when I came back a week later. I smelled something different in the bed, the covers were much different than I had left them, and...I guess I didn't think much of it, I was a bit tired at the time…"

She smiled up at him. "I think I wished in the back of my mind that you would know that I was there, even deeper I probably wished that you would come back while I was still there. I only stayed that night though, then left the next morning. Out of curiosity, what was that empty bottle of pills?"

Her hair slithered off his finger as he sighed deeply. "It was Vicodin, actually. Didn't take it very often, so I wouldn't say I was addicted. The bottle you saw lasted me like four months. Once in a while, I would get these terrible headaches, not really sure why. That was the only thing that worked on them. Tried ibuprofen, aspirin, Tylenol...don't worry, I'm not House."

The image of him walking around with a cane made her giggle, but sometimes he did have the same sarcasm as the brusque doctor. "Never said you were. Anyways, I left the next morning, and I considered leaving something behind, something for you to...I don't even know...I kind of felt like I was betraying you again by leaving...it was just a really hollow feeling like I had indulged in something too much and was reaping the consequences. But do I regret sleeping the night there? Not really...it  _was_  the first decent sleep I had gotten in a while.

"Over the years, I kept with my idea of not wanting to intrude on you, not wanting to bother you, perhaps it was a form of self-pity, or respect for you, or just stupidity, I don't really know. I like to tell myself that it was because I was too strong to feel dependent on you coming back, but really I think it was that I didn't want to admit that I was barely surviving without you. Like I said, I kept writing letters until they all got destroyed with the pictures, then I gave that up. Thankfully you decided to keep leading me to all of your effects, even though I didn't know it was you at the time.

"Besides the cabin and the letters, I would have probably faded away without that stuff, without some piece of you. I actually did try to look you up as soon as computers got advanced enough, hell, I tried before that but it was such a pointless endeavor that I quit immediately. I looked on all of the social media websites, because  _what if_ , but of course, you weren't there, I did some digging to figure out your phone number, not that I would have called or texted had I actually found it.

"Towards the end, I really did decide to try and forget you, a completely wrong and ridiculous plan, because I knew then that it was going to make being inevitably reminded of you that much worse, or better perhaps, but when I say that I thought the last thing you were going to do was appear when you did, I really mean it. When I saw you in that hotel room, I was in such a shock, so thoroughly poleaxed, that I had no idea how to act. So, I reverted back to what was safe, bantering with you, ignoring everything bad that I possibly could, pretending like nothing had happened…

"I think I immediately became afraid that I was going to lose you again, that you were going to slip through my fingers like some kind of rare unicorn, so I just...tried to make everything seem as normal as possible, as though I was holding my breath and if I exhaled you would vanish, even though there was a storm going on inside of my head, like everything that I had put away, every thought, every memory, every...it all came back at the same time, but it was like I was watching it from afar, rather than being in the middle of it, which is the only reason that I was able to ignore it for the time being.

"That was until we got to your house, and everything started to feel too personal, too...close to be ignored, especially when Chris told me about Wakefield, and what you said...

' _She really knows how to break a man's heart.'_

"When you told me that 'your girl' was just an expression, I became so monumentally frustrated with myself, with you, with everything, that all I wanted to do was shut it out, just shut everything off, hence the nap. I barely slept during that nap, by the way, my brain didn't let me. I just kept going around and around in circles-"

He finally cut her off. "I was trying to ignore all of it too, as I already explained to you, but the second I saw you sitting there looking like someone had died, I knew that something was going to happen, whether we were going to separate again, fight, talk,  _something_. Everything felt so...intimidating, all the memories, everything I hadn't told you yet…" his voice trailed off as he let the silence do the talking instead.

Everything had felt intimidating. But now that they were at the tail end, now that everything was laid on the table that mattered, there was only one thing left that she had to say.

"...Um, I have come to a conclusion, I think. This may sound cheesy, or whatever, but that's fine. Clearly, if we can sit here, and talk about all of this stuff, despite everything that's happened, despite all of the obstacles, despite our stubbornness, our insecurities... _all_  of that, if we can still sit here, or lay here, rather, and look at each other the way we are now, do  _this_ ," she leaned up to kiss him, "sleep together, tell stories, smile, laugh, cry, I think we are meant to endure."

She accepted his tender kiss, and the next one, sighing when he threaded his left hand into her hair, dropping it down to disappear under her shirt, splaying across her stomach. "I think you might just be right," he whispered with a sparkle of mischief. "I also think that I am in danger of falling asleep on your shoulder."

It was only then that she realized how  _light_  she felt, a feeling that she wasn't accustomed to, being unburdened, and all she could do was relax into the bed and revel in it, the contentment. "You can sleep on my shoulder all you want, I don't mind."

And after she leaned over to turn the lamp off, he did exactly that, stretching his body out along the length of hers, snuggling into the bend of her shoulder and neck.

They were both asleep almost at the same time, safe for the moment in the cocoon of themselves, shut out from reality for the next eight hours.


	22. Tentative Steps

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 22! Hope everyone enjoys this one! :)

September 16th, Wednesday Morning, 6 AM

* * *

Five minutes was how long she estimated she had been lying there, but five minutes in her state of drifting back and forth over the line between sleep and consciousness could really mean five years, or five seconds, or seven seconds, or twenty minutes. She didn't know, didn't really care to think about it further because she was also in that strange bracket of sleepiness that took away her ability to care about whether she was comfortable or not.

It  _was_  hard to breathe correctly when her mouth and nose were pressed up against a very solid chest, smushed really, but the bed was warm and the rest of the lean muscled body under the comforter was warm too, settled against her, and she couldn't gather the motivation to move, taking half-breaths, curling her hand around a trim waist, prepared to stay exactly where she was regardless of how much time passed.

She had woken up this way, pressed tightly against her love, his right arm wrapped around her in a rather possessive manner, not that she minded, but she was wondering when his clothes had come off, and somehow they had switched positions. She swore they had fallen asleep with him nestled into  _her_ shoulder with clothes on, rather than him snuggling her into his naked chest. He was still asleep, his even steady breaths making her hair flutter from the way his nose was pressed into it. Her right arm was trapped between them, and... _oh_ , the hard length of his morning erection was nestled against her stomach, and finally, she found a reason to shift a little bit, rubbing herself back and forth across it, pulling her face back enough to pepper small kisses across his skin.

Some of the warmth left her when he shifted onto his back, and the light coming through the windows, soft morning light from the rising sun, just barely illuminated his face, shadows settling on his cheekbones, his full lips just barely on display, his coppery skin darker in the dim, and it warmed her heart to see how  _peaceful_  he looked, how content, how unbothered he was laying there next to her, his chest rising and falling.

The lack of anything buzzing on her mind, the lack of swirling anxiousness and thoughts and problems, the absence of haunting memories, the clarity in her senses, allowed her to take everything in, and the perfection of the moment filled her with an indescribable emotion, made her chest constrict and her mouth fall open slightly.

Jack was  _here_  with her, and they had their entire lives to look forward to, finally together, no more hiding, no more secrets, no more pain, just  _them_ , in the present. It had taken a lot to get here, she knew, a lot of obstacles, and a lot of time, but she wouldn't take it back for the world, because one shift in history, one change, and they might  _not_  be here, he might  _not_  be stretched out in front of her for her perusal, they might  _not_  have years and years to enjoy.

That wasn't to say that there wasn't any peril, anything  _lurking_  just outside of this bubble because anything could go wrong at any second, with the lives they led, but that didn't mean she couldn't appreciate life in the moment.

Taking a deep breath, her attention was suddenly drawn to his right arm moving, disappearing under the blanket, and she understood what he was doing at the same time as realizing that he must be at least partially awake now. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and her breath came a little shorter as the excitement flowed through her. She rarely got this show from him, as he preferred for her to pleasure him most of the time, but when he did touch himself for her, it was one of the most beautiful sights she would ever lay eyes on.

She followed the movement as his hand arrived at what it was seeking under the blanket, making stroking motions just a second later as she sat up to watch with more focus. The muscles in his neck tensed as he tilted his head back, a small breath escaping his parted mouth.

It was as she had expected when his dark eyes fluttered open to find her watching him. He immediately stopped once he realized what was happening, what he was doing, and gave her a slow curling smile.

"Getting started without you, darling. Shame on me." His voice was still heavy with sleep, giving it an exquisite rough timbre. Reaching under the blanket, she wrapped her hand around his, leaning up to whisper against his lips. " _No_ , keep going, love."

Even in the dim light, she could see the heat pool in his eyes. "Want to watch, then?" Nodding, she searched the room for where-

"Top drawer of the nightstand," he answered, inclining his head in its direction with a smirk, and she climbed over him to retrieve the bottle of...almond oil, she discovered. Handing it to him, a smile of anticipation curving her mouth, the rest of her body practically trembling with it, when he popped the lid and poured a generous bit into his palm, then stopped, gazing at her. "Hard to watch anything with a blanket in the way."

She rolled her eyes while her heart jumped with more enthusiasm, and curled her fist around the edge of the comforter, pulling it down. When he was completely bare before her, she dragged her eyes over his form in appreciation, feeling the heat prickle at her skin from a tantalizing blush. " _Damn,_ I'll never get tired of you looking at me," but she didn't turn her head to him, only heard his hushed whisper as his hand reappeared in her box of vision, wrapping around his shaft. A memory was sparked within her, one that she had forgotten until just then. The first time she had... _examined_  for lack of a better word, his... _well_ , she hadn't known exactly what to call it then, but that wasn't to say that she didn't know what there was  _to_ call it. She just hadn't known what  _Jack_  wanted her to call it.

* * *

_It was rather amazing, she mused, that a man who she had thought would always dance on the edge of passion and furious urgency in bed allowed himself to relax under the weight of her gaze, laying there languidly like a lion after a fresh meal, especially with her current state of undress, as he had told her in no uncertain terms that the sight of her skin under his fingers would make him ignore a thousand soldiers of the Royal Navy bearing down upon him. Not that he didn't possess a near toxic amount of passion and urgency because he employed those two vices so well that she had contemplated just limiting her life to him ravishing her whenever he pleased, and she was positive beyond a reasonable doubt that he would_ please _very often._

_But the patience he exercised with her, letting her slow things down to touch him, talking with her if she wanted to talk rather than touch, which never happened after a certain point anyway, he even answered her questions, and she certainly had plenty of questions._

_It had only been a week since he had first taken her on this very bed, her bed rather than his, which had thrown an interesting twist on things, one that he had not failed to comment on, a quip along the lines of "making love on a King's bed is quite an honor, darling", after which she reminded him that it was only a King's bed out of his own machinations. It had earned her a saucy grin._

_Within a week, it felt like he had led her around the globe, or at least the equivalent distance, in the world of pleasure. She had known some inkling of what he was silently promising her when trying to convince her that "she would come over to his side", and oh how she had wanted to give into that temptation right then and there...then that first taste of his mouth working against hers, that first dip over the line between shameless flirting and innuendo into something far more dangerous, it had made the hunger for him increase into something uncontrollable within her, culminating into that evening when she had absolutely had enough...racing down to the council room to steal him away like some kind of wanton harlot._

_It really was like her world with him was divided into two halves, the first being a world populated by nothing more than fantasies between them, heated images within their heads about what the other might look like underneath the layers of cloth and leather, or what the other's hands might feel like against heated skin, or the words that might be spoken, or not spoken, how his voice might sound, whether it be whispering in her ear, or moaning against her...just the insane wondering, reaching, daydreaming, incessant imagining that she knew had plagued both of them from the moment they laid eyes on each other; that was the first half._

_The other half, the one she was currently residing in, was the satisfaction of_ knowing _how his voice sounded in the heat of pleasure, a rich husky growl even deeper than his normal speaking voice, knowing exactly what he looked like beneath his clothing, all coppery skin, tattoos, scars, and lean muscle, knowing precisely what his moans sounded like, a beautiful noise that gave her pleasure all on their own, it all truly felt like a world away from the fantasies, and she had wondered many times how she had managed to survive as long as she had there, in complete ignorance._

_Even knowing all she knew now, having felt all that she had felt at his fingertips, and the pleasure from the rest of his body, she still knew that he could guide her into deeper waters, send her into a higher state of frenzy than he already had, and it excited her like nothing else._

_But all of that...expanse of possibility, could wait for now, because she had finally gathered the courage to really explore...she found she didn't know...couldn't quite settle on the word for it, even though she had been up close and personal with it several times, she had never taken the time to just_ look _. And_ looking _was exactly what she was doing now, in the soft orange light of her cabin, lit by only a few lanterns and a few candles._

_It had been her plan the entire time, even though the plan had been pushed to the brink of being foiled when he had pressed her against the wall, ravaging her mouth with his and nearly pushing her to an orgasm just by rubbing her through her breeches, but she had been resolute in her need to really take her time with him, and he had sussed out what she was intending when she had finally dragged his breeches down his legs only to push him onto her bed._

" _While I appreciate the attention, I hope that this mission of yours involves touching at some point?" Frustration was not the tone of voice that he used, not even a little bit of annoyance, only pure contentment, with only a small lilt of teasing. "We'll see, Jack, we'll see. Now hush, the King is ordering you to only speak when spoken to."_

" _You think you can just order me about, do you?"_

" _Yes, and if you do want touching to become involved, I suggest you let me."_

_The look that he gave her informed her that he knew exactly how badly she wanted to touch him, the lengths she would run to do so, and that no amount of his insubordination would crush that desire. "Besides, don't pretend that you don't like me ogling you." His lips twitched in the smallest smirk. "I just said that I appreciate the attention, or is your ogling me taking away your ability to hear?"_

_Rolling her eyes up at him with a dangerous glare, she reached out and trailed a finger down his left thigh. "Mmm, I hope not, Captain Sparrow, because then how could I possibly enjoy it when I make you moan?" She was using the heaviest voice she could muster, internally snickering at the fact that her light seduction was going to lead to nowhere for him for the moment. "If you don't get on with something, darling, then I will just go to sleep and dream of you making me moan instead."_

_She knew him well enough by this point to know that there was no way on this green earth that he could go to sleep while still being as hard as he was. He might tease and taunt her, but having her gaze at him with the level of fascination that she did, even now, was something that started a fire within him almost unlike anything else, being inside of her and having her mouth wrapped around him probably the only things above it._

" _So," she began with a smirk, still trailing her finger in circles on his thigh, "which do you like best? My mouth around you, my hand stroking you, or being inside of me?"_

_His eyebrow quirked, and he looked like he was holding his breath for a second, before letting it out on a smooth exhale. "You know, not too long ago I could barely get you to admit to wanting to kiss me, and now you're asking such questions…"_

_Halfway down her descent to replace her finger with her lips, she glanced up at him. "And with you sprawled out in front of me like...well, I don't know of any comparison that could equal this," she said, motioning to his form. "I guess you're just very convincing." Then her lips did connect with the skin of his thigh, but she got no admittance of pleasure from him yet. "Well?"_

_Fingers were suddenly playing with her hair, and she smiled. "The answer to that question really depends."_

" _Oh?"_

" _Timing is the big one. If we're starting from the beginning, then I prefer all three, not necessarily in the order you said, and not necessarily limited to just one of each. But if you strut around taunting and teasing me like you enjoy doing, then I don't quite have it in me to waste time with the first two."_

_She raised her other hand to draw figure eights on his right thigh, getting close to his shaft, but never quite closing the distance. "But that doesn't answer the question, Jack. Which do you prefer overall?" He wanted to twist the conversation more, she could tell, wanted to stray even further from the original question just to aggravate her, but then he sighed._

" _Would you like explanations of why I choose the one I choose and why I didn't choose the other two?"_

" _I'll go even further and tell you that I am willing to bet a few doubloons on which one I think you will pick."_

_Betting with Jack was a dangerous game, like entering a battle with a sorcerer that knew tricks she didn't. "Think you know me that well?" he asked as she trailed her fingers back and forth over the divide between his hip and his leg. "I'd like to think so, Captain."_

" _Well, go on then, which one is it?"_

_Truthfully, she wasn't quite as convinced of her answer as she made herself out to be, but based on all of the evidence she had gathered, the other two just didn't seem to quite measure up, or maybe it was because she couldn't allow herself to believe that he would choose the one she wanted him to._

" _Actually, I think I'll keep my secrets to myself for the time being," she replied as she finally allowed a finger to travel delicately up and down his length, which was still standing at proud attention. Whether he was surprised or not from her declaration, she didn't know, because the only reaction she got was another raised eyebrow, and a whispered "interesting"._

" _I'll divert the conversation a bit and tell you specifically why I like each."_

" _Mmm, divert away," she purred as her fingers danced around his tip, fissures of excitement tickling at her when his hips twitched in response._

" _Bloody tease. I enjoy your mouth because of your desire to use it on me. Not many women actually enjoy that task you know, and you take enjoying it to a completely different level. It's not a selfish request when I ask it of you, and it's not a pleasureless endeavor when you seek to do it yourself."_

 _It was not because her mouth was warm and wet, nor the skill she had, but because she_ wanted _to pleasure him, and it made her feel a bit warm and fuzzy inside. "Those women haven't seen Jack Sparrow in the throes of pleasure then." A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth._

" _I do make quite the sight, don't I?" he said, snickering. "I enjoy your hand for similar reasons, except with that I can interact with you more, kiss you and such. But-"_

_And then he stopped, and she wasn't sure if it was because she had just dragged her tongue in a leisurely stroke all the way up his shaft, or if it was because he was hesitating about whatever it was that he was going to say. "-but," he continued after a little moan sounded in his throat, "being inside of you absolutely lays waste to the other two, and well...you have my answer then, I suppose."_

_Something fluttered in her, pride, surprise, excitement, she wasn't sure which one it was, or if it was a combination of all three. She did know that she hadn't expected,_ couldn't _expect him to choose that because she hadn't allowed herself the arrogance of expecting him to like that level of intimacy with her above all else. She stayed quiet for a moment and sat up straight, keeping her head down to stare at her lap. "It appears then that I owe you some money."_

" _That wasn't what you thought I was going to choose?"_

" _...No, it's not. I thought-" and then she was cut off by his "what did you think?" at the same time._

" _...My mouth...you seem to enjoy it thoroughly," and it was his turn to be surprised, as the gaze he leveled at her was more than just...it seemed to penetrate her, as though it was trying to search through her mind._

" _Are you telling me that you really thought...Lizzie. I spent hours upon hours...well, more time than I am comfortable admitting thinking about being inside of you. Do you really suppose that I wouldn't hold the privilege in high regard now that I have it?"_

_The reminder that he had fantasized about her was a comforting one, and yet it was also a reminder that she felt silly for ever questioning whether he did or not, just like she felt silly now for choosing the wrong answer, and rather than giving him an answer to his question, she doubled back to something he had not elaborated on. "What do you like about it?"_

" _What do I like about...oh." Then a light entered his eyes, or maybe it was just the reflection of the candle in the room. "Put your mouth back where it was and I might tell you."_

_She didn't even bother pretending to have an issue with his order and bent to place soft kisses on his length again, looking up at him through her eyelashes. "Well?" she asked for the second time that night._

" _Impatient, are we? Apart from the obvious things, tight, wet, and warm, a lot of it is feeling you respond to me, feeling the pulsating inside, your nails on my back, your legs wrapped around me, and your bloody gorgeous moans, especially when they contain my name."_

_Every description he gave her made her pulse quicken like a drum being beat with rapidly increasing intensity. "You know, not too long ago, I was only fantasizing about kissing you, and now you're describing why you like making love to me."_

" _Like you said before, I'm convincing." It was said with a growing need in his voice since she had reintroduced her tongue to her ministrations, her hands gripping his hips tenderly. "And I would wager all of_ my  _doubloons that kissing me wasn't the only thing you thought about doing."_

" _We would be here all day if I described everything I thought about doing to and with you, and correct me if I'm wrong, but your capacity for my teasing only stretches so far."_

_His head tilted back when she took just the tip into her mouth, but then she realized that he intended on preserving his self-control for the moment because there was no request for more, no pleases or 'oh darlings', only a saucy smirk and a gravelly response. "You would be correct, though I think it stretches farther than you may think."_

_Bloody pirate, infuriating, gorgeous, complex, inscrutable...she could call him pirate again, but having already thought it, a hundred other names to describe him flashed through. She pushed them all away, deciding that it was not the right moment to be reminded of how deep her feelings went for him. Instead, she pulled back and focused on the task at hand, the one that she had wanted to perform the entire time before she had been distracted by talk of choices and bets._

" _So, this here is the secret to all men, hmm?" she asked as she held his shaft as though she was examining a custom made pistol for quality, giggling internally at the comparison._

_A laugh, a deep melodic chuckle rumbled from him, and she delighted in her ability to make him laugh since she hadn't been sure at first if he ever would again after the Locker. "That's rather limiting, don't you think?"_

_She mulled it over, thinking over the last week, counting all the times that he had completely surrendered to her the second any part of her touched his cock. "Based on the evidence I have gathered, I would propose not."_

" _Evidence?"_

" _Yes, evidence. You can withstand all of my blows, whether they are kisses, caresses, or anything else, except when they involve_ this _. Then, you melt into a glorious little puddle of quivering need. Do you deny it?"_

_His eyes narrowed, but nothing else surfaced that could even approach being called indignation. "Not quite denial, but I like to think that I retain some modicum of awareness. Care to test the theory?"_

" _In due time, I'm not done."_

" _Teasing a captain is a most grievous offense." His voice lowered several octaves at the word 'grievous'._

" _We just discussed that you enjoy my teasing."_

" _It'll earn you a punishment of a good ravishing right on this bed-"_

" _Good thing we're both captains, isn't it? Are there any rules for captain against captain?"_

_He went silent for a moment, but his eyes held a ridiculous amount of mischief. "Well, it starts normally with one of the captains climbing on top of the other captain, or pushing them against the wall, or bending them over a desk, anything works really."_

" _...as I said, I'm not done. And several of those scenarios require a particular arrangement of captains, if you will."_

" _That they do, Lizzie darling, that they do."_

" _This_ is _the secret to men," she said, squeezing him gently for emphasis, "but I will concede that it is only one of the secrets to_ you _. And before I'm through, I will discover all of them."_

" _Don't sound so threatening, love, or you might scare me away."_

" _We'll see how far you get before you're running back begging me to make you come."_

_A heavy breath was exhaled from his lungs like he was a frustrated predator hunting a particularly frustrating target. "I don't beg."_

_She briefly thought about arguing that declaration, and then decided against it, far too interested in what she held in her hand. During her internal musings about Jack's body, which was during her internal battle to near death with lust and giving into selfishness on the way to Isla Cruces, she had entertained thoughts about this part of him far more often than not, refusing to stop even when a blush heated her skin every time. It was the defining part of his masculinity, and it had fascinated her more than she_ should _care to admit. But she didn't mind admitting it, had liked the wondering, the imagining, the wantonness of thinking about a man's cock._

_And he was beautiful, she had discovered when she had finally revealed what lay beneath his clothing, especially in that moment, when he had been so hard, so eager for her touch. The second his breeches had hit the floor, he had almost sagged against the wall with both relief and the overwhelming feeling of having her eyes on him. That second part he had told her when they had laid in bed cocooned in a delirious state of unyielding euphoria._

_Not that she had anything to really compare it to, discounting the glimpses she had gotten aboard the Edinburgh Trader, but she knew he was large nonetheless, larger than average, and she had discovered some of the reason for his arrogance then._

_But arrogance was something that he kept at bay for her, especially when she had tentatively touched him that first time, stroked her fingers up the vein on the underside, flitted them across the swollen tip, marveling at the velvety softness, he had even stayed still through the first flicks of her tongue. His patience at allowing her to explore him at her leisure had...she couldn't really describe the feelings it had stirred within her. But her exploration then hadn't been thorough enough for her, stunted by the rush, the hurricane within her body at finally putting to death the fantasies and the wondering, and the reaching._

" _I think you do beg at least once in awhile, Jack."_

" _Well, you take any longer, and you might just prove yourself right."_

" _Don't tempt me, hearing you beg is one of life's finest gifts in my opinion."_

_But she finally conceded, pressing kisses to every inch of his shaft, tracing the ridge at the top, learning his shape, memorizing it to her mind, learning the sensations that differed depending on where she touched him, tentatively exploring and experimenting with the soft weight at its base too, still marveling that something so hard could be so soft, throbbing with life. And when she got her fill, or rather when the wetness between her thighs told her that enough was enough, she swung a leg over his body, writhing upon his cock for a moment before lifting and lowering herself on him all in one fluid motion, cherishing the way his mouth fell open with a gentle exhale of breath._

_Sometime later, she was re-dressing, intending on seeing to some of the things she had been neglecting as the King, since she had barely left Jack's side since that day, but then as he came up behind her, still entirely naked, pressing kisses to her neck under her hair, she had the clarity of mind to remember something._

" _Tomorrow night, then?"_

" _If I can wait that long," she whispered back as she reached into her coat pocket, and turned to press two doubloons into his palm, closing his fingers around them. "Good night, Captain Sparrow," and with one more tender kiss, she was slipping out of the cabin and down to her office, catching his pleased smirk at the last second._

* * *

"I'll never get tired of looking at  _this_ , at  _you_ , Jack."

And she wouldn't,  _could_ never grow bored of watching his masculine form ready to perform for her, his muscles taut, his eyes glittering, a hint of urgency swimming just below the surface. But it wasn't even watching the physicality of it, but rather the supreme expression of vulnerability that he was showing her, the trust he was placing in her allowing her to be an audience to something that was normally only done  _without_  an audience, that was absolutely  _intoxicating_  to her.

His first stroke was a lazy one, a slow adventure from the base to the tip of his length, then back down again, but it still made a small moan escape him as he tilted his head back, and even though the next stroke and the one after that mirrored the first, the sight made her pulse quicken furiously, and she immediately decided that she wanted to be a participant, rather than just a bystander. Taking his free hand within her own, she raised it to her lips and sank one of his fingers into her mouth, swirling her tongue around it, winning her a deep throaty groan, and an appreciative grin. "Should've known you couldn't last just watching for long."

"I didn't think you'd mind," she replied, a smirk in her voice as she abandoned his finger to kiss her way down his wrist, sucking on his pulse point, searching the rest of his body for what she could move onto next. "...would never mind…" he managed to breathe as his hand quickened, settling into a rhythm of smooth even strokes. When his head tilted just enough to the left, she swooped down on his neck, spreading wet kisses along the tightening muscles there, then pausing to watch his movements down below, fascinated, the evidence of her fascination making itself known between her legs.

"...oh  _god_ , Lizzie," had her head snapping back to his face, her breath turning rapid at the need in his voice, and she leaned back up to his neck to whisper in his ear. "What're you thinking about, love?" At the same time, her hand settled on his chest to play with his nipple.

"...'M thinking about burying myself inside of you until you beg me to finish," was his response, tumbling out on an exhale of breath, his back arching, his strokes speeding up. It made an uneven moan escape  _her_ , the fact that he was thinking about being inside of her while touching himself making wetness pool at her entrance. "What else?" she purred, knowing she was playing with fire.

"... _fuck_ , the way you feel around me, so tight and wet and  _warm_ …" and then she descended onto his nipple with her mouth on the edge of his last word, sucking then dancing her tongue around it, watching his hand quicken out of the corner of her eye, reaching out her other hand to steady herself on his shoulder, as her heart was racing at such a pace now that she was feeling a wave of dizzying arousal, swirling inside of her like a storm.

"I love the way you make love to me, the way you feel inside of me," but she had a hard time speaking, her voice thick with desire. Just then, his free hand fisted in the sheets and she raised her head to watch his face once more. His brows were knitted together, eyes squeezed shut, his jaw was clenching rhythmically even as his mouth hung parted, low growls falling from it as his other hand moved.

Even in the dim, she could see a flush on his skin, and it felt hot under her fingers when she splayed her hand across his stomach to feel the muscles there coiling, her other hand stroking his face. She leaned up again, kissing up his jawline. "Are you close, love?" she whispered, even though she could tell that he was. "... _yes...fuck...touch me…"_  and her hand immediately dove down to cup his sac, massaging it, fighting the urge to touch herself as he started to chant her name under his breath.

Just when she knew he was nearly there, she wrapped her hand around his, stroking him too until his body went rigid, a deep groan mixed with a hissed ' _fuck_ ' spilling from him as he came into her palm in hot bursts, trembling, and then finally dropped back onto the bed, his chest heaving. Where his face had transformed into the perfect cross between ecstasy and agony as he orgasmed, it was now serene, a lazy smile stretching across, his eyes half-open.

Quickly getting up to wash her hand off, she joined him again, stretching her body out next to his, turning his face towards hers to cover his lips in a tender kiss.

"Enjoy the show, darling?" he asked when he broke away, his voice gravelly. All she could do was nod, her breath coming out in puffs. He seemed to realize how high he had made her climb, and immediately pushed her onto her back, leaning over her to recapture her lips as his hand went south, disappearing under her PJ trousers to drag them down enough to gain access to her.

A breathy "oh god please" came from her just as he nudged her thighs apart and slid two fingers inside, his thumb already working her swollen clit. His other hand lifted her tank top and then cupped her breast while his mouth met her nipple, sucking on it. "You're so close already, aren't you? Just from watching me…" Even through the pleasure she could hear the wonder in his voice and smiled just before her lips opened again to push another moan out. " _Yes...oh god please don't stop_ …"

He was kissing her neck now, then her jaw, before finally nibbling on her ear, his fingers switching from stroking her inside to sliding in and out in smooth thrusts. "Wouldn't dream of it...almost there love…" Her head was thrashing as the rush of heat traveled up her spine, her hair standing on end, her skin prickling, and she could barely register his mouth at her nipple again as her world broke, wave after wave of euphoria lifting her away, until she collapsed into his arms, barely able to catch her breath.

"Mmm, I could get used to waking up next to you," she heard him say through the blood still rushing in her ears as if he hadn't already woken up next to her a million times before. Just as she was ready to fling a sarcastic retort at him, a soft " _I love you_ " was whispered at her, and she melted against him like a piece of chocolate under the sun, burying her face into his shoulder with a cross between a sigh and a quiet giggle.

* * *

The sun was shining into the window, that soft morning sun that should bring with it happiness and joy and...but all it did was remind her that she hadn't even slept last night, her mind too alive with theories and connections and  _digging_.

It was  _difficult_  to convince herself that being here this early to examine  _case_   _files_  was really necessary, but the rational part of her brain kept telling her that her career was hanging in the balance because of this goddamn case, so getting up early to do her job currently should be treated as a luxury that could disappear in the blink of an eye. Besides, a manhunt, and that is really what this was at the moment, was rather exhilarating if she were being honest with herself.

Something about him was alluring, like he was the challenge that she had become a detective for. Most of her night had been dedicated to pouring over all of her expertise, all of her training, to try and make connections, to try and figure out  _who_  he was. She felt like all she needed was a few puzzle pieces that were missing, both with him and with the case.

"...Did you sleep at all?"

" _Yes_ ," she snapped, glaring at the coffee mug on her desk, but clearly Cyril didn't believe her if his eye roll and disapproving sigh was any evidence. "I still don't understand why you don't understand that not sleeping just slows you down."

"Maybe for someone like  _you_ , who doesn't let a case turn into an obsession, but as I have explained before, I like the chase, the mystery."

He sank into the chair opposite her and glared at her for a moment, before shaking his head. "Did you at least come up with something...a theory? Information? What color hair dye he uses?"

Fixing him with her own glare, she rifled through everything she had extracted for this conversation. "I...I think he lives here."

"Lives where?"

"In the U.K. Not in London, too populated and too close to airports, police, and other areas of interest. Probably somewhere not too isolated, but also not too busy. Make a list of cities that fit that description."

Her coffee slid from her end of the desk to his as he snatched it. "First of all, I thought I was  _your_  boss. Second, care to share the supporting evidence for your theory?"

"The cases we have picked out to examine, the cell phone, the interception of a weapon shipment from the IRA, and the theft of a Russian sports car, a few Russians mysteriously vanished if I recall correctly, they are all high-profile high-risk crimes, right?"

"...Yes…"

"Well, the other part of this theory is...I think he operates outside of London as well. I was looking through some records of other theft cases in other big cities, and I found a bunch. Mumbai, plenty of big U.S. cities, Moscow, places like that. Going back at least 15 years."

"And this ties into your theory about why he lives here  _how_?

"All of the high-profile cases are limited to the U.K., mostly to London, in fact. The rest of them outside of the U.K. with the exception of a few, are lower-risk jobs. Why would he only take high-risk cases here?  _Because he knows the area._  He's more in control here than he would be in a foreign city."

Cyril sat there for a moment, scratching his face, running his hand through his salt and pepper hair, before giving her a little grunt. "That...actually makes sense. Do we have a profile of him yet? Physicality, finances, day-to-day patterns?"

"I thought about those too. Each of the three cases were done with extreme efficiency, skill, and most importantly, lack of consequence. He's good."

"...Ok?"

"I...think he has a smaller build, not like a skinny guy, but he isn't Rambo, so that allows him maneuverability. Obviously very comfortable around weapons, and cars, clearly he has money, and...like you said before, he isn't a psychopath."

"Care to elaborate on why you agree with me?"

"He stays isolated and does these jobs because they are something that he can do while staying anonymous. A psychopath wouldn't care about being hidden, generally. Probably wouldn't care for theft jobs to begin with. I...also think he owns more than one property."

"Why?"

"Because, all of these crimes, the ones here and elsewhere, have similar time gaps. He goes on  _vacation._ "

She watched him reject a call on his phone, muttering something about " _every damn morning, this bitch_ "...his ex-wife, probably. "This...is all very interesting, Monica, but I'm still...having a hard time completely taking this professional thief theory seriously."

This was something she had prepared for, his continued denial about the plausibility of it all, and she had the perfect defense for it. "Cyril, the three cases, IRA guns, the phone, and Russian car, they have quite a bit in common."

He watched her for a moment, sizing her up, and then leaned back in his chair and waved his hand at her. "... _Fine_ , like what?"

"All three were done at night, between 1 and 5 A.M. That means he prefers the cover that doing it then provides him. All three cases had  _no_  evidence of any weapons being used. That means that he doesn't have the need to use weapons, or he cleans up well enough to hide the evidence of using weapons.  _And_ , we already knew this, but all three names that we found in connection with these crimes don't exist. I think he creates different identities when doing high-risk jobs. Furthermore, and this is just a wild conjecture of mine, but I think one of the people in the evidence job acts as his face in meetings with his clients."

"...So, he does the jobs themselves, but has someone else arrange and cut ties with the job?"

"Yeah, the different identity and lack of a consistent face make him almost impossible to track for everyone involved. Also, in every car theft I can track that I believe to be connected to him, including the Russian car, the car just vanishes, never to be seen again. Most of the time, when cars are exchanged from one hand to another, something about the car turns up. Not these. He  _keeps_  them."

Both of Cyril's hands drummed on the desk, a scowl set on his face. " _So_ , your mystery man so far likes fast cars, likes guns, likes stealing things, isn't crazy,  _is_  very smart, keeps himself very hidden and secretive, has a fuckton of money, and likes a little danger with his breakfast?"

"...Sounds about right."

"...Ok, now let's compare all of this information to the evidence job. He did this one during the day. Why?"

"Easy, the bomb threat. He needed to make sure it was going to be effective. Hard to make a threat when there is no one here."

"And he didn't give any kind of identity on the phone."

"No, he didn't."

It was only a moment later that she knew she had finally convinced him.

"I...he did seem too smart to be a common criminal, and all of the...information you just gave me does point to one person being behind...all of it."

She didn't even realize how enthusiastically she was nodding until he quirked an eyebrow at her.

"Let's build the rest of his profile. We need  _something_  to announce, can't just pretend like nothing is happening here."

"I...know. I just don't want to scare him into complete hiding."

A drawer opened and a piece of paper and a pen were pulled out in quick succession, and she rolled her eyes at him, annoyed that he was now gung-ho about the whole thing, when before he had seemed like he would have less trouble believing that Barack Obama really was half-lizard.

"I realize that. My first question is, is he romantically involved?"

"...Why?"

"Because. The answer to that question could explain why he does certain things, and why he  _doesn't_  do certain things. A married man behaves very differently from a single man, Monica. Believe me."

Of course he would know that, having just cut ties from his  _third_  wife in fifteen years.

"...No, I do not believe he is romantically involved. The thefts are too consistent, too...well performed for him to have the distraction of a significant other."

"Ok...no girlfriend or wife then. I think we have enough to make a press statement tomorrow. I'll get that list together of the cities he could possibly live in, and continue to monitor everything else. Constables in London and surrounding big cities are still on alert for any related activity. What about the Cartel?"

"What about them?"

"Think they are going to come here?"

Yes, she did.

"I doubt they are going to sit in Mexico and wait for everything to blow over. No, they are going to collect the evidence themselves, rather than let it be transported. We should station constables at all major and minor airports, and alert all airport staff. Perhaps we can intercept the evidence, figure out who actually killed Ishii, or at the very least, see this mystery man's face, or whoever he is involved in this whole mess with.  _Something_  has to go our way."

* * *

She flicked her long black hair over to her other shoulder as she relaxed on Jack's couch with a glass of tequila.

Jack. The man that had Lizzie's heart all wrapped up, since day one.

All of the times that Lizzie had talked about Jack, one trait had come out as consistent. The man had always  _known_ her when no one else could. He knew her worries, her pleasures, her frustrations, her hopes and dreams, her failures,  _everything._ It was no wonder she had fallen in love with him, since most men couldn't even hope to figure out what their women liked to  _eat_.

And the woman's face would like up like a Christmas tree whenever she talked about him, would go on and on, and then it was like she always fell off some kind of cliff, going very quiet, very...solemn.

Just by seeing them interact, seeing the bond between them, the  _love_ , she knew that regardless of what had ever happened between them, the two of them had something bigger than all of that, something that would survive anything. It was like they were two halves of one whole, and if one died, the other would follow.

When she had learned that Jack was in Mumbai, and that Lizzie was going to be there too, she had prayed to God that they would find each other, because fate could be cruel to them for only so long. Now they were together, a long-neglected error in the world finally corrected.

And besides all of that, Jack was sure a damn  _catch_.

Suddenly the couch sank down next to her, and she turned to find Chris sitting at the other end.

"Hey," he said, raising his mug of coffee in greeting. "Morning tequila, huh?"

"Desayuno de campeones. Breakfast of champions."

"Not a huge fan of the taste myself," he said, jerking his face towards Jack and Lizzie's bedroom. "Think they are ever going to come out of there?"

"You act like they've been in there for a week."

He snickered. "I mean...they pretty much have."

"...Chris, they just got back together after 44 years. Not only that, but they're now  _together_  together. I'm surprised they've left the bedroom at  _all_. They're borracho el uno del otro, absolutely drunk on each other."

"Yeah, I suppose."

They sat there for a good five minutes in silence, thinking and sipping.

"So...do you enjoy working for Jack?"

He looked around at her at first like he was about to just say 'yes', then his face transformed into an 'are you kidding me' expression. "Ringa, I work for a nearly 300-year-old man who was at one point  _King_  of the Brethren Court... _well_ , one of them anyways. He was also Captain of one of the most fearsome pirate ships in the Caribbean. Trust me, being employed by Jack Sparrow isn't exactly something to complain about."

"I mean, he can sometimes be a little bit of an asshole, but that's whatever," came a tired voice from in the kitchen. They both craned their necks to see Shawn standing there, struggling with a bottle of beer.

" _I mean_ ," Chris mimicked, "maybe if you didn't provoke him all the time, you would change your opinion."

"Provoke him? I didn't  _provoke_  him into sending me to rendezvous with that big Russian guy about that car. You know, the one that ended up with four dead bodies here. I'm also pretty sure that the guy was totally gay, because he kept trying to convince me to go upstairs to poigrat' nemnogo, and I googled that, it means 'have a bit of fun'."

"Right, but-"

" _And_ I am 105% sure that Jack  _knew_  he was gay, and just wanted to torture me."

" _Right_ , except you're leaving the part out about how just a few days before that, Jack caught you buttfucking on his couch. Seems to me that he had kind of a reason to want to torture you."

Shawn glared at them over the top of his beer bottle for a second, before rolling his eyes and shaking his head, accepting defeat. "Whatever."

"Are you telling me that you don't enjoy working for the Immortal Captain Jack Sparrow?"

It was a few more seconds until Shawn responded. "I mean...I guess I have a pretty cool job."

"That's what I thought."

All through it, she was sitting there alternatively laughing outright and snickering. "How did that conversation go, by the way?" she asked both of them. "When Jack told you about his history?"

Shawn joined them, sitting on the other couch. "He told both of us at the same time in 2002, since he met us a year apart, not a huge time gap there. We were sitting in," he stopped to chuckle for a second, "the basement of a strip club, actually. Don't ask, I hardly remember what led to being there."

"He explained that he trusted the both us enough to tell us a really big secret," Chris cut in. "We thought that he was like...a serial killer, or actually a woman, or something like that. There was nothing in the world that could prepare us for what he said next. Well, actually, the first thing he said was, 'I'm not actually 30'."

"Then," Shawn continued, "he proceeded to produce a piece of paper and a black ink pen, and literally drew the Black Pearl in near minute detail for us in under like...an hour, punctuated by the story of how he became immortal."

* * *

_The strip club smelled awful, or rather, the basement did, but they were able to ignore that for the time being because they had just found out that their employer was most probably insane._

" _You're...I'm sorry, but you're not almost 300 years old. Arctic whales only live to like, 200, don't ask how I know that. You're definitely 30-"_

" _Nope," Jack cut in, trying not to laugh and failing, still drawing on the piece of paper. "To be exact, I'm 254."_

_They both got the impression that he had been waiting to tell someone this for a very long time._

" _Here's the real kicker, and sorry if you knock your heads on the chair by fainting, but there is another person as well, another immortal person. Elizabeth Swann, she's the same age. Well, technically, I'm 294, and she's 279, but we decided to ignore the years that we had already lived, and just start over at 0. I mean, when you're immortal, does it really matter how old you are anyway?"_

" _...What in the fuck...what in the fuck kind of drugs are you taking?"_

" _Plenty, not at the moment, but I've had my fair share. Opium was really popular back in my pirating days."_

" _Your...your_ what? _" he spluttered._

" _He said pirating days," Shawn chimed in, staring at Jack like he was some kind of magical dragon._

" _I know what he said. He's crazy...we were hired by a crazy person...he is gonna be on one of those TV shows...like Dr. Phil, eventually."_

_Jack had to stop drawing for a second to get his laughter under control. "Sorry, that image is hilarious. But I promise I'm not crazy. My name with my previous titles is Captain Jack Sparrow, Pirate Lord of the Caribbean Sea, Half-King of the Brethren Court."_

" _...What...in the actual fuck...right, ok," he started, fully prepared to find a different career, "I'll just be over here looking in the...job section of the imaginary newspaper that I'm holding..._ fuck  _me…"_

" _Oh, calm down, don't worry. I have plenty of proof."_

" _Proof? What in the fuck kind of p-"_

_The piece of paper was shoved at him then, cutting his sentence off with a garble. On the paper was a fully drawn, very detailed ship._

" _...What...what the fuck is that?"_

" _It's a ship, Chris," Shawn said like he was stupid._

" _No shit, I see that. But what is it?"_

_Jack leaned back in his chair, twitching the pen back and forth in his hand. "That was mine. My ship, that is. The Black Pearl. She sunk in 1749. Royal Navy attack."_

" _...1749...Royal...ok, I'll admit that I'm impressed that you can draw a ship like that from memory, but I still don't believe you."_

" _And what will it take, exactly?"_

" _What will it...I can't even believe I am having this conversation right now," he said, looking at Shawn to see if he was equally against the idea. He wasn't. "I need real proof, like...pictures, items from then, facts that you would only know if you were there, real shit. Not drawings."_

" _I can provide all of those things. For example, I know that Commodore James Norrington didn't really die in a shipwreck caused by a hurricane. He was killed by Bootstrap Bill Turner. The Flying Dutchman was a real-nevermind, that would probably make you believe me less. The Brethren Court 'pieces of eight' were in fact just random junk, not gold coins. Last, I'm not a huge scruffy man like some history books would have you believe."_

" _You're in...history books?"_

" _Yeah, lots. Like I said, most of them get everything about me completely wrong besides my ship and strangely enough, my red bandanna. I think one book even had me with hair like He-Man. Disgusting."_

" _And just to humor you,_ how _did you become immortal, you and this Elizabeth Swann person?"_

" _Lizzie and I sailed to Florida on the Pearl," he said, motioning to the piece of paper, "and found the Fountain of Youth."_

_...He couldn't decide if that topped everything he had heard so far as the most ridiculous thing or not. "You're telling me that you are immortal because you drank some magical water?"_

" _Actually," Shawn chimed in again, "a lot of historians and scientists are starting to believe that it might be a real thing."_

" _For fuck's sake, stop watching the History Channel. Those same scientists believe that aliens built the Pyramids."_

" _The Fountain is probably the best proof I can give you because I could take you there and show it to you, but it's also the only proof that I'm not going to provide. I show one person, or two rather, and suddenly flocks of people are coming to drink from it."_

" _You don't trust us?"_

" _No, I do. I wouldn't be telling you this if I didn't. But that is something I just can't risk."_

_A silence stretched between the three of them, before he broke it, muttering. "Now I know how Harry Potter must have felt at first when he was told that he was a wizard. How about this, you bring this Elizabeth Swann to us and have her corroborate your story. I would have a harder time believing that there is someone equally as crazy as you over disbelieving everything you just told me."_

_As he talked, Jack's face fell, like a rain cloud had passed over it. "I...no. Sorry, can't do that."_

" _Can't bring her here?"_

" _No, don't even know where she is."_

" _Well, I'm sure she isn't that hard to find-"_

" _Fucking drop it," Jack suddenly said, with all of the seriousness of a seasoned soldier talking to a terrorist. "She isn't coming here. Probably wouldn't want to, even if I could find her. Pretty positive that she hates me, and in the future, do not mention her name unless I bring her up first. Please."_

" _Fine, fine, alright...then bring some of those books to us, or something else."_

" _You're starting to believe me?"_

" _I don't know, maybe. We'll see."_

* * *

"Needless to say, we didn't believe him at first. Eventually, I gave in once I saw enough books with pictures that looked mostly like him. There was only a few, but it was enough. Then I turned into an over-excited third grader and bombarded him with questions, about everything from World War II, to-"

"What about World War II?"

All three of them looked around and found Jack leaning against the wall just before the hallway to the bedroom.

"I was just telling them about the time when you casually told us you were immortal in the basement of a strip club."

"... _Oh_ , yeah, then after you finally believed me, I got interrogated for...oh, like three hours about history. Felt like I had taken a temporary job as a professor. By the way, Ringa, Lizzie and I completely avoided anything having to do with World War II. So don't bother."

"What about World War II?" was said again from behind Jack. Lizzie was standing there rubbing her eyes and yawning. "Chris was telling Ringa about when I told Chris and Shawn about me, and you, I guess, being immortal."

A grin spread across her face. "Let me guess, you grilled him about history just like Ringa grilled me?"

"I definitely did. Learned some interesting stuff."

"I'll have to tell you guys sometime about when Lizzie told me. I wasn't quite as annoyed with her as you were with Jack, but I didn't believe her at first either."

It was true. Only when she had produced, of all things, Jack's effects, had she allowed it to be a possibility that the woman really had been a pirate and a Pirate King on top of it.

Jack and Lizzie joined them on the couch, and of course, they were snuggled together shamelessly. "So, Lizzie and I were thinking that we could all get out of the house. Find something to do for the day. Should probably stick around Bath though. We can take two cars, I think Lizzie and I will stay out longer than you guys. Might go to dinner again, we'll see."

"Yeah, that sounds good," Chris said.

"Ringa, Shawn?"

"I wouldn't mind doing some Bath sightseeing. While I love your casa, Jack, I need some fresh air."

"I don't care either," Shawn said, finishing off his beer.

"Cool, we'll leave in like a half hour then. We'll be in the truck, you three can take the Maserati. It's the least exotic car I have besides my truck, so you should go unnoticed. Be ready at 11:30?"

They all nodded. She really did need some fresh air.


	23. The World Doesn't Wait

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 23! Hope everyone enjoys! :)

September 16th, Wednesday Morning, 11:30 AM

* * *

At which point was he going to start feeling like he belonged?

It was the question that he asked himself every day, every time he spoke, every time someone looked in his direction, every time he put one foot in front of the other, or when he didn't move at all, when he just laid there and stared at the ceiling, making up scenes in his head where he didn't tear down everything that could be good in his life, scenes where he knew the right thing to say, the right expression to have...where he knew how to feel comfortable _investing_ in something, putting emotion into something...but those scenes felt alien, like they were some kind of alternative universe, a film that was leagues above his understanding.

He still remembered...a lot of things, things he wanted to forget, things he should forget but couldn't, and then the things he didn't want to forget but couldn't help watching them slip away, like ash through his fingers. Not that anyone would know what he did or didn't remember, or knew, or wanted to know, or wished he didn't know...his only talent was shutting everyone and everything out to every side of him that...every side that was breakable, combustible, able to be shattered just from a fast gust of wind, or by the after-effects of another mistake, another fuck-up...the wrong word, or the wrong reaction...or being an eight year old kid that forgot to blow a candle out.

_At which point was he going to start feeling like he belonged?_

Did he want to belong? Did he want to feel...like he was a part of something? Or did he want to continue holding everyone at arm's length, pretending he didn't have a real soul or a real heart...sometimes he deluded himself into thinking that he enjoyed feeling like an anomaly, like a pariah...even to himself sometimes, like he could turn his skin inside out and read everything that was wrong with him on it like a...like he read the newspaper announcement about the fire, like...it was right there on the front page, the main story, a bold headline proclaiming the end of his life as he knew it for the entire city to see. 

A strange image came to him then...he pictured someone asking him to describe the momentum of his life, whether it was a fast-paced run across the unknown landscape, a languid float through the ocean...but he would stop them there and tell them that it was neither of those things, rather a slow trudge across a never-ending highway, not caring to look for cars that were coming directly at him, because if they hit him, he couldn't make any more mistakes.

People always watched tragedies on the news, school shootings, car crashes, building collapses, and they always wonder what  _they_ would do if they were part of it, what their reaction would be...almost as though they wanted it, wanted their life to come crashing down around them like they never had anything nice to begin with.

But they had  _no fucking idea_.

Because life doesn't come crashing down, your life barely shifts, barely budges. Other life moves on, leaving you there in the middle of the floor screaming as the world keeps spinning, spinning until you're forgotten about, but  _your_  life goes into a standstill, because you're only eight years old and you have barely started losing your fucking baby teeth and you don't know how to deal with death, loss, pain, or any of those things.

He was only eight. Just started the third grade, with his brand new backpack, new shoes, new teacher...he waved goodbye to his mother as he had gotten on the school bus...should have looked at her face a second longer, should have…perhaps the cruelest treatment in the world is having your world implode when you are a child, because you don't even understand what is happening, cannot comprehend the enormity...but eventually, doors start opening in your mind as you get older, you start learning, understanding, and it's like the pages in a book are being turned, a new layer of awareness on each one, akin to the levels of hell, only there are so many more than hell could ever conceive of.

_Had he ever belonged?_

Memories had a funny of working, sometimes they had missing pieces, sometimes only the echo of them is left behind, usually the good ones, the ones you want to remember, the spots of joy and happiness in an otherwise dark and stormy sky...but the bad memories, the darkest clouds in that sky, their colors and their smells and their fucking sounds all remain, swimming in and out of thoughts like...like the bright lights of the ambulances and the shiny red of the fire truck glowing in the light of the moon, or the burst of water from the hose, and then the shouting, the screaming…

...but the sound that haunted him the most, the sound that he still found reminders of to this day, was the sound of the  _fire_ , the burning and crackling, the sound of wood falling, turning to ash, the sound of the collapse, a blunt and uncaring representation of life giving up, on him, on itself, on everything.

He had only been eight and just forgot to blow the candle out after staying up a few minutes too late to watch cartoons. An innocent mistake that shot through everything like a bullet, leaving a path of destruction that even a hurricane might find it hard to compare itself to.

They hadn't told him right away...it had been the day after that a police officer explained to him carefully, but in that way where they act like they are talking to a person standing on the edge of a building, that a terrible accident had happened, that his parents were in a better place, and that he was going to be brought somewhere nice, where nice people would take care of him.

That officer hadn't had the balls to tell him that it was his fault, that he was a stupid little kid that had been too careless, too...that he had killed his parents.

It had been a long car ride to Detroit, where his foster home had been, but the moment that the car had pulled up...the family's faces as they stood there had been too happy, too...they were almost warped, like a painter had tried to make someone look happy, but it was just on this side of fake...too wide smiles, an eye roll just behind their expression...a fight about not wanting another kid...a burden on the family etched into their faces.

But despite everything looking wrong, he had stayed with that family until he was fourteen, until...until he had reached the point where he could no longer pretend that he wasn't starting to feel the guilt pouring into the cracks in his mind, the maturity of his mind doing its damnedest to ruin him.

He had become the cliche runaway kid, the fuck-up, the weird kid that hung out on sidewalks and bummed cigarettes off of people, that did odd jobs here and there to pay for food...the kid that Detroit would point to if cops ever went looking for someone to pin a crime on, despite volunteering at a children's home as a companion...a fill-in sibling for them when they had no one else. The only bright spot, the only thing that he couldn't ignore, couldn't shut himself away from, seeing the smiles on those little kid's faces when he came by, when they demanded that he played with them, when they wanted to watch cartoons...it was like he was watching what he had been before…

Learning to dance on the surface of the world, learning to treat everything like it was a shallow puddle rather than a depthless ocean, was a hard lesson to absorb, but one that he had started to ingrain within himself...the idea of getting too deep into something, of putting his toe in, then his foot, then wading completely into the water of life, it was asking for a monster to come out and drag him under...only that monster was him, because he also had the talent of being the one best at fucking his own life up.

His sense of humor was a 'fuck you' style, where he acted like he might strike out and bite someone if they got too close. The snake tattoo that he had gotten...snakes were disliked by the majority of the world because they were seen as nuisances, as pests, contributing nothing...yet they were incredibly focused creatures, focused only on the important things...feeding and moving, much like him. He rarely truly laughed, laughed like it wasn't a thing he needed to feel like he still possessed emotions. His laughs were always like personal tests, where if he laughed hard enough, for long enough, he might still be human.

He felt like a criminal, most of the time, like he was on the wrong side of the world, the side of misfits, the half where all the people who never got the world go, who see things differently, who were molded by things that no one else understood, like flames consuming the only place where he had ever felt like he was  _home_.

It was fitting then, that the first meaningful person to come into his life since...at the age of nineteen, was, in fact, a real criminal, stealing a car from the mechanic shop that  _he_  worked at, where had finally found a skill, a  _talent_  worth perfecting.

The memory was very distinct, seeing Jack almost... _glide_  into the shop, not seeing him standing in the corner...it was early in the morning and the sun was just starting to come up half-way over the horizon line. He had had half a mind to try and stop him, but his work boots had become glued to the cement floor, and he just watched Jack work his way inside the car, watched him hotwire it, and then he had just happened to scan the shop through the windshield, and saw him…

It was interesting, seeing someone decide whether or not to kill another human being, and it was quite another to watch someone with that decision made...in the form of Jack Sparrow pointing a pistol at him as he back stepped out of the garage onto the tarmac in a panic, waving his hands in front of him like that was going to stop him from getting shot. It was also an unfortunate circumstance that whatever a person is holding when they get scared shitless is dropped, and even more unfortunate that he had been holding a blowtorch. Blowtorches and gasoline don't mix well.

He had been helpless, standing there as Jack had turned around to watch the car he had just been trying to steal explode. The look on the man's face was something he would never forget, the perfect physical representation of "you little punk kid fuckhead, you just blew up my  _car_ ". He would also never forget the feeling of a pistol barrel digging into the side of his head, with Jack explaining in no uncertain terms that he had better come up with a good reason for him not to shoot, and  _fast_ , because he was very angry and felt very much like pulling the trigger.

Of course, the only thing he had been able to come up with was  _"I can fix cars"_ , to which Jack had responded with  _"Oh really? I thought you were a birthday clown...no shit, you idiot, you work at a fucking car shop"_.

" _No no...I mean like...I can do whatever you want to cars, like custom shit, I can put NOS in, paint jobs, whatever you want...I won't tell anyone...I'll even steal cars with you just please don't shoot me…"_

By some miracle, Jack had retracted, at least his gun did, and the rest of him for a second, before his fist came barreling forward. The fucking guy had a vicious swing, but he had only hit him once, leaning down to whisper "that was for my damn car" in his ear as he shouted in pain. Once he had regained the ability to remember that he had a jaw, he had started apologizing to him spastically, part of him had still been fixated on the pistol, convinced that Jack might still shoot him.

But he hadn't. The next thing Jack did was put his gun away and dig a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket. " _Here, shut up and tell me what the fuck is wrong with this car."_

For the few seconds that it had taken to figure out whether Jack already knew what was wrong and testing him, or if he really had no clue, he had looked down and read the scrawled handwriting.

" _It's the head gasket, check the head gasket,"_ was all he had managed to get out, still shaken from nearly getting killed twice, and in that space of five seconds, in the time it took to get those eight words out, Jack Sparrow had decided to employ him, with an appraising look and a quiet " _nice_ ".

Which he responded to with a still spastic breathless " _what?_ ", earning him a dramatic eye roll, and " _I have asked, oh I don't know, maybe ten people to figure out what the hell is going on with that car, and none of them...and you did it in five seconds. You can work off making this car explode unless you have better things to do…"_

" _No, no, nothing better to do...what uh...what should I call you?"..._ like he was talking to a damn alien species.

" _Jack. Call me Jack...and you? Let's see, you look like a Brandon-"_

" _Nope, it's Shawn,"..._ immediately lecturing himself for interrupting.

" _Shawn. Hm. Not a Brandon then. So, how do you feel about the U.K?"_

" _...the what?"_

" _The U.K., you know, Her Majesty's Land, England, Britain, the place with the cool accents...what, didn't you pay attention in Social Studies?"_

It was a precipice then, between telling Jack that he hadn't gone farther than ninth grade, tumbling into his entire life story, and just quipping some smart ass comment.

" _I know what the U.K. is, but we're in Detroit, why-"_

" _Because I live in the U.K. So if you're going to work for me, you're also going to live in the U.K."_

" _...oh."_

He hadn't thought to protest, hadn't even considered questioning him further, both from fear of him asking more questions,  _where are your parents?, are you leaving anything behind?, where do you live?_ , and because the prospect of getting the fuck out of Detroit sent his brain into hyperdrive. He would have agreed to move to fucking Antarctica in that moment.

" _So, sound good?"_

" _I don't know if you know anything about Detroit, but this city is...yeah, I'll come with you."_

And just like that, he was Jack Sparrow's new resident mechanic.

If he were telling this story, the story of his life, to someone, they might buy that it was that simple, but he had found that perhaps being a blind double agent between Russia and North Korea with ADHD and a weak bladder might be less complicated than working for Jack.

It was ironic, he thought, that a new chapter in his life had started because of fire, like both times in his life where he felt semi-okay were bookends to a time not to be spoken of, the first ended by fire, and the second one beginning because of fire. It also didn't slip his notice that destruction seemed to follow him everywhere.

They had left Detroit four days later, and he hadn't looked back. Not that he wasn't looking forward, because the fact that he was going with someone who had just tried to shoot him, before just punching him in the face instead, put him slightly on edge. Jack, being his incredibly perceptive self, far more than people might give him credit for anyway, of course noticed that he was acting like someone had told him that demons were following him around.

" _Jesus, relax, you look like a crack addict in need of a fix, you're all twitchy. I'm not gonna hit you again if that's what you're worried about."_

" _Right...you just strike me as someone unpredictable...like one minute you like your cheeseburgers with everything and the next you hate ketchup and mustard."_

" _I love ketchup and mustard, it's horseradish that I can't fucking stand. Disgusting shit."_

Jack was the kind of person that exuded depth, like the human version of a damn onion, yet it always seemed like everything but the outermost layer of him was guarded by armed cavalry with a side of fortress and a dash of turret gun. Get too close and you'll get blasted to smithereens.

But even despite that, and even despite how he felt like he was on the cusp of learning that every new car problem that Jack presented him with came with a helping of 'I know you're just my mechanic but today you're going to learn how to break into a bank', he really enjoyed what he did.

The man was smart, far too smart, scary smart, like he could  _destroy a room of politicians in a debate and leave them scratching their heads_  smart, or  _con half a damn country and be moving on to the next one before they figured it_ out smart, or even just being able to deconstruct a person from across the street smart.

He also knew that the man's trust was  _not_  just thrown out into the world, multi-colored trust confetti being spewed out for everyone from Jack Sparrow was  _never_ going to be a thing, so the fact that he was trusted by Jack was nothing short of a miracle, and he still hadn't figured out why. One day he had asked him, asked why he had hired him…

" _I already told you, you figured out-_

" _Jack, I'm more sure that you could have figured it out on your own eventually than I am that Earth is round. Why did you actually hire me?"_

It had taken him a second to answer, but it had been like he was waiting for the question.

" _Because I knew you were never going to...feel at liberty to try and dig at me...try and figure me out or fix me. You're as fucked up as I am, don't know why, but you are."_

" _And you figured that out from me blowing your car up?"_

" _No. When you...took the paper, you didn't look at me, didn't try and question it, you just took it and read it and figured it out. I could tell that you...you're used to doing things efficiently and quietly, you don't draw too much attention to yourself, and...if you try as hard as I think you do to seal yourself off, you might see the same behavior in me, and accept it as something that you're never going to change."_

" _So...you think we're alike?"_

" _Maybe, we at least have the same regard for the rest of the world...like if we don't take a second to look where we are going, or think about what we're doing, or consider every move, we'll have the rug pulled out from under our feet."_

And he did do that, did think carefully about everything he did, except when he didn't.

He  _had_  wondered why Jack never had a girl around, or girls, or really any kind of female companion, and being an idiot, like he usually was, he had asked him that one day too, in such an eloquent way that he was still slapping himself for it.

Sitting at the kitchen table, counting money, just minding his own business, chasing a string of thoughts that had no relation to each other, and then one just broke through the wall of his brain-outside world barrier like the proton torpedo that hit the Death Star.

" _Do you like...ever get any?"_

Jack had been distracted by something, so he hadn't really been listening.

" _Any what?"_

That was the moment that he should have shut his mouth, but his intelligence had apparently taken a temporary vacation.

" _Do you ever bang_?"

He was 95% sure that it was the second time that Jack ever thought about punching him in the face.

" _...Why?"_  except it was said with a 'choose your entire train of thought from this point on very carefully' tone of voice.

" _I mean...you're not exactly ugly,_ " making Jack's face sink deeper into a 'keep talking you stupid fuck' expression, " _so, where are all the girls?"_

But then he had stopped being angry like someone had flipped the switch off on him or something, like he had  _been_  angry about the subject way too much already and didn't have the strength to keep doing it.

" _There are no...girls. As in plural. Before I tell you this, you're going to swear to me that you will never bring it up again unless I bring it up. Clear?"_

" _Uh...yeah, I guess."_

" _...There was one girl, and I say was with all the emphasis in the world, because she isn't anymore. We never even...were never even together, and I still managed to fuck it up...said some things to her that I shouldn't have, I don't know what else I did wrong really, but there must have been something...haven't seen her in a couple of years."_

Of all the things he could have said Jack Sparrow was, being permanently in love and heartbroken was right below cereal being advertised without milk on the possibility scale.

" _...have you tried talking to her?"_  earning him a tired sigh and a forehead rub from Jack.

" _No...don't think there is much of a point. All she's going to tell me is that I crossed the line and I can't come back from it."_

" _...Did you?"_

" _Yeah…yeah, I did. And there isn't a second that goes by that I don't hate myself for it. Not like...I don't hate all of myself, I just...it left a stain on me, you know? The kind of thing that always comes back to remind you of its existence when you're trying to sleep. 'Oh hey, I see you're trying to sleep now, so allow me to remind you of how you pushed the woman you loved away."_

" _And she hasn't tried talking to you?"_

" _No, like I said, she hates me probably. I would hate me after what I said to her...I have no misconceptions of the reality of what happened between us, but I just...I wish words weren't permanent sometimes. I wish I could make her understand that...but it's useless because I said the things I said and I can't take them back, regardless of how much I didn't mean them."_

The subject was never brought up again until after Jack told him and Chris about his history, and it was a few days after that even, that the connection had been made.

" _Hey, Jack?"_

Once again distracted by something, like he usually was, " _What's up?"_

" _It's Elizabeth, isn't it? That girl you talked about,"_ of course forgetting that he had sworn to not bring it up unless Jack did first,  _but_  he technically did when he mentioned her name.

After a heavy sigh, " _Well, I called her Lizzie most of the time, but yeah, that's her."_

Imagining Jack with a girl had been...interesting. Just picturing him being...sweet, or whatever, was like picturing Satan surrounded by a litter of kittens. Not that Jack was like Satan…

What he hadn't imagined happening was royally shitting on his first time meeting the woman Jack loved. Of course, he partially blamed Jack because when he was almost about to puke Jack Daniels all over the person sitting next to him at the bar, it was difficult to retain any kind of information, like " _Hey, Shawn, friendly reminder that if you come anywhere near the house tonight, I'll tattoo horrors on you. Good talk. See you tomorrow."_

Had he been sober, he would have put two and two together, because the only reason Jack would want Chris and him out of the house would be to have someone  _else_  in the house. But he hadn't been sober and had promptly forgotten anything about it when he woke up in the morning on his futon with a mean headache and another empty Jack Daniels sitting next to him.

It was like a string of unfortunate circumstances that had led to his near-death, with the first being the flat manager calling him about some problem or another, then his phone acting like a piece of shit, which is why he had collided with Elizabeth on the way in the house.

" _Fucking watch where you're going!_ "

Again, since his entire memory of the warning from Jack was chased away by alcohol, it had never even occurred to him that  _she_  was...well, not that accusing her of being a slag was appropriate regardless of who she was...but his proclivity for saying inappropriate things without taking a second to think about them was astonishing, and the moment he had read the horror in Chris's eyes, right before Chris told him her name, and only a few seconds before Jack had walked in the door, all the worry about  _losing_ , about having to start over again came flooding back.

If there was ever a time that his life flashed before his eyes, it was then. Almost even more so than the mechanic shop. He figured that calling Jack's girl a slag pissed him off even more than blowing his car up. And of course, it only took Jack about four seconds to suss out what had happened.

It was by some mercy that Jack acknowledged  _why_  he hadn't remembered that there was going to be a guest in the house, and he figured that was the only reason that he was still alive, and he also liked to think that Jack had too high of a regard for him to throw him out.

He should probably apologize to him for that formally.

But seeing Elizabeth with Jack, really seeing them together, it was like Jack was an entirely different person around her, like he had never really been alive before, just...living. Just going from day to day, and it had made him wonder that if they could be happy together, if...they could trust the world enough not to take that away from them, despite everything that they had been through, then why couldn't he do the same thing?

The thought had terrified him, like someone that he had just met proposing to him, or like a train screaming across tracks just an inch from his face, it made his world speed up and swirl, and he had retreated again, when just before he had been so close to getting comfortable with his life. It was because he hadn't thought much about shutting himself off before, and the change had come gradually without him noticing, but as soon as the subject was brought back into focus…

Maybe one day he wouldn't be afraid of falling again, wouldn't be afraid of starting over the game of life he was playing where the only options were to go forward or not move at all, but it wasn't this day, and he doubted it would be tomorrow either.

"...Shawn."

His head snapped up to find Jack hovering over him with a raised eyebrow. "Are you coming or are you thinking about proposing to the fireplace? You've been staring at it for ten minutes."

"Yeah...yeah, sorry, just spaced out I guess."

_Maybe the only thing that was stopping him from belonging was himself._

* * *

Apparently, while he had been watching his life movie in his head, the four of them had decided on braving the new escape room in Bath, and Jack seemed particularly enthusiastic about the prospect, probably because he enjoyed anything that was challenging, that required intelligence.

"Jack," he started, thinking back on a memory that was both hilarious and horrifying as they waited for the room to be ready. "Remember that awful corn maze that you convinced Chris and me to go to...where was that...somewhere in the states. I got lost, then when I finally found Chris, we couldn't find you. When we  _did_  find you-"

"We realized that he had been sneaking around us for the entire hour scaring the shit out of us, rustling corn stalks, making noises, I think at one point he even cocked his gun," Chris finished for him. "He nearly made me shit my pants when we found him. See, it was pitch black out, Shawn left out that detail, and Jack suddenly appeared out of nowhere with a flaming corn stalk in his hand, walking directly at us. He had set one on fire with his lighter, and he was also wearing this long black coat with a hood that day, so he literally looked like a grim reaper who had traded his scythe for fire corn."

Lizzie sent a 'seriously' look at Jack, which only earned her a shrug and "they just scare too easily, I thought it was funny".

"Well, don't get any ideas about scaring me in here."

"Can't promise anything, darling. Besides, the looks on their faces made it all worth it."

"Uh huh, I'm sure."

Ringa leaned over to Jack and whispered " _I'll scare her for you"_ , earning a snicker and a conspiratory look from him and an eye roll from Lizzie.

"I'm just glad that he didn't like...break out his Joker impression at any point during that because I would have turned around and sprinted out of that damn maze," he said, shuddering.

He did find it a bit disconcerting how well Jack could embody that character.

"Ok, guys, ready?" the little blonde attendant said, paying particular attention to Jack. He and Chris were used to girls always checking Jack out, but clearly, Lizzie was  _not_ , as the girl had gotten an immediate 'keep staring and you might lose your eyes' look from her.

When they entered the first room, all they found was plain cement walls, four open doorways, one in each wall to the left and right, and two in the far wall, and a pedestal with a strongbox sitting on it, a single keyhole on the front panel.

"What do you suppose is in there?" Lizzie asked no one in particular, then looking to her left to find Jack missing.

"Probably the 'open the exit' button," came his voice from behind them, but it echoed strangely, and they all twisted around to see him holding or rather wiggling a walkie-talkie in front of his face. "I'm willing to bet," he continued, "that everyone that tried this challenge failed to find these, at least right away. I would further the bet and say half of them went straight through one of these passages immediately, and the other half wasted a substantial amount of time inspecting the box before they even thought to turn around. People never look at where they started, only at what's in front of them."

There were four more hanging on the back wall, and they all claimed one.

"So, looks like the main goal is to find a key for that," Chris said, marching up to the pedestal.

"Yeah, maybe," came Jack's uncertain response, and got narrowing eyes from Chris, who was twitching his head back and forth between the box and Jack.

"Maybe? What else would the-"

"The most obvious solution is often a deliberate decoy to waste a person's time. I wouldn't be surprised if there is no button inside there...there probably isn't even a key to open it."

He suspected that whoever had designed this challenge had  _not_  designed it up to par for Jack Sparrow.

"...Ok, so what should we do?" Chris asked, crossing his arms over his chest in annoyance. "Split up?"

"That seems to be the intention since they provided  _these_  for us," came Lizzie's voice from the right side of the room as she peered around the corner of the passage there, holding up the walkie-talkie in their direction.

"Four passages, five of us. I'll take Lizzie and we'll go straight and right, Chris, you go straight and left, Jack, you take the right wall, and Ringa, you take the left," he said, then faltered when he caught Jack's raised eyebrow. "What? You and Chris were just going to start arguing, and we were going to get nowhere."

"I wasn't concerned about you playing team leader, I'm  _concerned_  about why you want my girlfriend with you."

Even he had to dramatically roll his eyes at the immediate flare of protectiveness. "There is seriously more of a chance of me chopping my own dick off then there is of me coming onto her-"

"By my account, you already  _did_  come onto me."

The rest of his sentence was still running around inside his mouth as he tried to figure out whether she was angry again about it, or if she was joking with him, then he shifted his attention to Jack's grimace.

"Please don't ever talk about emasculation again."

"Right, sorry."

He started forwards and heard Lizzie following behind him, waiting for her to ask questions. She didn't disappoint.

"Why  _did_  you want me with you?"

"...Because, I haven't had much of a chance to erase our unfortunate meeting, and it's going to be real awkward if...well, if we continue having that awkwardness between us."

Her head tilted up in acknowledgment. "Makes sense," she said as they made their way through the short hallway, emerging into a room with…

"Is that a  _gravestone_?" she exclaimed, stopping to stare.

Indeed it was, sitting right in the middle of the room, and just behind it was several more, five or six of them, all with names on them. "And a mannequin…a  _creepy_  one."

Annoyance shot through him when she snickered at him. "You're afraid of dolls, and clowns, aren't you?"

The mannequin was kneeling in front of the middle gravestone, a bouquet of red roses sitting next to it, but it looked like whoever had designed the mannequin had done a rush job. The eyes were different sizes, the lips were just a smear of red that barely had a shape, and it looked like someone had taken a brown Sharpie and dotted some freckles on, and that was nothing compared to the dollar store bright orange wig that looked like it belonged in a bargain bin witch Halloween costume.

" _No_ , I'm not afraid of clowns or dolls, but these things are just  _weird_."

There was nothing else in the room besides the little scene, just the same cement walls and fluorescent ceiling light.

"Jack, is Shawn afraid of clowns or dolls?" she asked into the walkie-talkie.

"Umm, not that I'm aware of. Pretty sure he has a phobia for my Joker impression though. Always gets a bit twitchy around me when I've been quiet for awhile. By the way, what's in your guys' room?"

"A weird mannequin scene. It's kneeling in front of a gravestone, grieving or something, or at least it would be if it was alive."

"Huh, I have a mannequin thing too. I'm in a pretty accurate recreation of a hospital room. There are a doctor and a patient in the bed, both mannequins. Painted like shit though. What about you Ringa?"

"Same thing, maniquí. Though my scene is what looks like a customer service desk, with a receptionist sort of person and a customer I guess. Chris?"

"I've got a living room with what looks like a husband and wife arguing. There's a broken vase on the floor and the table is overturned. Apparently one of them was pretty pissed about something, or both I guess."

Interesting.

"So, what  _are_ you afraid of?"

He turned towards Lizzie to find her staring at him, a gleam in her eyes.

"I'm not afraid of  _anything_."

"Right, you sound like Jack," and then she raised the walkie-talkie again, " _Jack_ , what's Shawn afraid of?"

"Ahh, I see, this is going to turn into a bad decision on his part, taking you with. Don't torture him too bad, love. And he's afraid of roller coasters, puking, and getting stuck underwater. Kinda strange about the puking thing though, considering how much he drinks."

"Oh come on, I don't drink that much-"

"That's a bunch of bullshit and you know it. You drink more than I do and that's saying something."

"Well, from what I've gathered, you used to be a constant drunk, so-"

" _Fuck off_ , I relaxed my drinking after awhile, especially when I figured out that operating a motor vehicle really doesn't go well with a bottle of rum in me."

"And captaining a ship did?"

"I managed to sail to an island that can't be found except by those who already know where it is without a crew...don't ask, I managed to destroy Cutler Beckett's ship, with the help of Will Turner, I did plenty of honest pirating...ha, oxymoron,  _and_ , I sailed to the Fountain of Youth."

"Whatever."

"Haha, I'm not torturing him, Jack, I am just making the experience entertaining for him."

He rolled his eyes at her but was internally glad that they seemed to be getting along.

"Why roller coasters and getting stuck underwater?" she asked, switching the walkie-talkie off for a second.

"Well...long story short, when I was seven, I had a prank played on me at school in the swimming pool where they held me underwater. It was more the experience rather than the water. And roller coasters are far too risky as far as their engineering quality and upkeep."

"I see. I'm afraid of being restrained in any fashion, suffocating, and well, not much else really."

" _Not much else_ …"

"What can I say, I'm almost fearless. By the way, in case you were wondering," she paused to hold down her button again, "Jack is afraid of cold weather, allergic to it almost, afraid of running out of rum, and he is damn near petrified of...um, nothing, nevermind-"

"I am  _not_  afraid of running out of rum, thank you very much."

"Oh really?"

" _No_ , because that scenario is literally impossible-"

" _Hey, idiots_ ," Chris cut in, sounding like he was talking to a group of misfits. "What do you say we try and figure out the mannequins."

"Sorry Chris, we'll start behaving now. Until we stop again, anyway," Jack said, an obvious smirk in his voice.

In five seconds, probably.

As Lizzie walked around the room, searching, he reflected. She really didn't seem to fear much, except for one thing, and he wagered it was the exact thing that she had hesitated about revealing. Both of them were terrified of losing each other, but he also knew that they would both do everything in their respective powers to prevent that from happening. Russia certainly knew all about it.

She also seemed very intelligent, as if Jack would ever go for anyone that wasn't at least equal to him, but her intelligence was more of an internal kind, almost like she preferred to keep it to herself, where Jack liked to...not quite  _brag_ , but show off, more like, which made her next move even more surprising.

"Chris, you said you had two people arguing right?"

"...Yeah?"

"And Ringa, you have a customer service desk?"

"Si amiga."

"We have a gravestone...and Jack, you have a doctor and a patient."

"Yeah, have an idea?"

"I think there is a common thread between all of them. That's our clue."

"I mean, they're all plastic, painted stupid- _ow!_ "

"...Lizzie, did you just hit Shawn?"

"... _No_ , my hand just wandered onto his shoulder and then acted of its own volition. I take no responsibility for the swatting of his person."

Now he was glaring at her, challenging her to swat him again, and she sent the glare right back. "In fact, maybe I'll let  _Shawn_  figure it out since he wants to be a smart-ass."

"To be honest, love, I think he learned that from me. He wasn't that bad when I first met him-"

" _Of course_ , how could I have missed  _that_ connection?" came her sarcastic reply.

Apparently, she was serious about him finding the answer because she crossed her arms over her chest and started tapping her fingers in an 'I'm waiting' motion.

Well, they  _were_ plastic, and they were all... _talking_.

"They are all talking…"

"Nope, the gravestone mannequin isn't doing any kind of talking...I mean, unless this is 'I see dead people' world now," Jack said.

Some of Jack's sarcasm had, in fact, rubbed off on him, because he could have said the same thing. The Sixth Sense  _was_  a great movie.

"Right, but they are all... _communicating_ in some way. The husband and wife are arguing, I guess that could be called communicating... _shitty_  communicating...the doctor and patient are communicating, the customer and receptionist, and gravestone mannequin is  _trying_ to communicate, so-"

"That's the clue," Jack cut in. "It's the walkie-talkies."

"The...walkie-talkies?"

"Mhm, love. I'm guessing that they've engineered these somehow to contain the answer to our escape. Some kind of passcode, button combination, hidden compartment,  _something_ , and I'm guessing we need to use all of them to figure out whatever it is."

"So we need to search the rooms to...work out how to use the walkie-talkies," Ringa finished.

"Yeah, I guess. Give Shawn a high five, darling, he deserves it. Let's all reconnect in twenty minutes."

She switched her walkie-talkie off and started looking around the room again, as he did the same.

"What, no high five?" but he didn't expect one, especially when she turned around and gave him a 'not a chance' look.

They searched the room high and low for a good ten minutes, running their hands over things for hidden... _anything_ , pushing on things, inspecting the mannequin, inspecting the walls and floor, and found nothing of interest.

"They meant for this puzzle to be solvable, right?" she complained, making a huffing noise.

"It must be something...something we missed, didn't think of…"

"Well no sh-"

They had looked at everything, smelled everything, touched everything, but there was something, some technique they didn't try, something that hadn't considered…

" _Numbers_. We didn't think of numbers."

The look of annoyance stayed on her face for a few seconds, left over from him interrupting her before it transitioned into an almost appraising expression. "You're right," she said, before doing the same thing he was doing, counting the gravestones.

"With the one in front, there's seven."

"Jack," she said through her walkie-talkie, "Shawn might have figured out the next clue. Find some kind of number in your room. We counted the gravestones in ours, there are seven."

"Funny, that, I was just looking at the heart rate monitor here. Obviously not a real one, but the sticker they have looks real enough. Our poor mannequin's heart beat four last times before it flatlined."

"Seven and four. Chris?"

"I don't see anything here that could be a number unless they want me to count the pieces of the broken vase on the carpet- _oh_ , wait, the girl mannequin has a phone in her hand...well, apparently the husband is a real asshole. She's dialing the emergency number, nine."

"Ok, so we've got seven, four, and nine. Ringa?"

"Mine's easy. The clock above the desk is set at exactly three."

"So we have four different numbers-"

"But five walkie-talkies," Jack finished for her, and then it sounded like he was tapping his lip. "Wait, the starting room. There was only... _ah_ , the last number is one. Only one thing in that room. So we have seven, four, one, nine, and three. That sound right?"

"Sounds good to me, love...hmm, now we just need to figure out which order they go in…"

"Is there anything in common between the mannequins? Besides the communication?" Jack asked.

"...Um," he started, racking his brain for the answer. "Two of them involve death?"

There was silence for a moment, and he reflected on his suggestion like a kid might in math class when the teacher looks at them with that 'how stupid are you' expression.

"...Shawn, have I ever told you that you are much smarter than you give yourself credit for?"

A small amount of relief and pride surged through him. It was a rare thing, Jack complimenting him, but when it happened, he knew that Jack meant every word of it.

"Why do you say that?"

"Think about it," he answered.

Death, two of them had to do with death...one of them  _could_  have to do with death, and two of them had very little to do with death.

"Proximity? To  _death_ , that is. The gravestone, that one is obviously the closest. Then the doctor and patient, then the husband and wife, since almost 30% of all male and female murder victims are spouses, then the customer service... _could_  involve death with a few tweaks, but highly unlikely, and the middle room has nothing to do with it."

" _So_  for the grand finale, what is the order of the numbers?"

"Ummm….seven...nine- _no, wait_...7, 4, 9, 3, 1."

"Excellent, Lizzie, since I'm guessing you didn't bother with that last high five, you really better give him one now. Go on."

She rolled her eyes and kept the walkie-talkie switched on as she smacked his hand so Jack could hear. "Good job, you know. You  _are_  pretty smart, not that Jack would hire someone stupid."

"I was just going to say, I knew there was a reason I hired you. Ok, let's all meet back in the middle."

* * *

"Ok, now that we're all back together, the last clue points to the order of the walkie-talkies-"

"Hate to cut in Jack, but I've already figured that out, and allow me a moment of pride here, because I thought for sure you would have noticed this already, but apparently not." Chris flipped his walkie-talkie over and revealed a raised number five on the back. "I'm guessing that the rest have four, three, two, and one on them."

They all checked, finding that he was right.

Jack sent a glare at him, followed by a middle finger, followed by an 'I'll let you have this one".

"That's all bien y bien, but it still doesn't tell us the order-"

"Sure it does," he said, feeling extra confident. "The theme here seems to be death, and death doesn't normally make one think of counting  _higher_ , does it? Obviously, we are supposed to go backward from five, down to one."

"So." It came from Lizzie this time, who was giving him another twinkling look like she was being pleasantly surprised by him. "Let's see, we have _two_ sets of numbers with a particular order, from top to bottom. I figure each number corresponds. The first number in the set matches the first number in the other set, and so on. That means, Chris, you have number five, so you would bring 7 up on your little screen. Ringa, you have four, so you would get... _4_ , Shawn, you have three, so you get 9, I have two, so I would get 3, and Jack, you have one, so you get... _1_."

Once they got it all worked out and written down, they brought their numbers up on the screen and then heard a door click...behind them.

"Clever, the entrance is also the exit. Well, looks like this escape room wasn't designed to beat us, hm?" Jack said, grinning.

* * *

He watched them as they all left the room, hoping to catch Jack on the way out. When a window of opportunity didn't present itself, he literally walked in front of him and stopped him, turning to give the rest of them a 'go ahead' gesture. He saw Lizzie's eyebrow raise, and then her eyes flicked over to Jack, who reassured her with a nod of his head.

"What's up?" he asked once they were out of earshot.

Of course, he knew something was up, but he was surprised that he didn't sound annoyed.

"I... _ahh_ , I wanted to apologize...more coherently for what I said to Lizzie that day...I  _really_ didn't mean to meet her like that...just another stupid Shawn moment…"

Jack looked at him, really searched his face, and apparently realized how much the mistake had been bothering him.

"Yeah well... _look_ , it was kinda half my fault for not warning you again, but that's beside the point. I just told you in there," he jerked his thumb over his shoulder, "that you aren't stupid, far from it, in fact, so stop putting yourself down every time you make a mistake. Do you realize how fucked I would be if I acted the same way you do every time I fuck something up?"

"But you don't really-"

"Oh  _Christ_ , if you're actually about to suggest that I don't make mistakes, just  _stop_. I pushed away the love of my life for 44 years, I'm an alcoholic because I have no defense against addiction, or at least very little, I was oblivious to the fact that Lizzie loved me for... _fuck,_  almost three centuries, and I'm a  _reckless fuck_  most of the time when something doesn't go my way."

"But-"

"She forgives you for what you said, trust me, if she didn't, you'd know it. If  _I_ didn't you'd know it, and you've known me long enough to know that."

"...Yeah, I guess…"

Apparently, Jack wasn't satisfied yet, judging by the fact that his head made a whole half circle, stopping to glare at the parking lot, a few of the cars, the street light, and then the sky when his eyes turned upwards.

"I... _we_  don't exactly have... _fuck_...I don't think you realize just how much I value you and Chris. I mean, I was wading through fucking Nothingville until I met the two of you. Without Lizzie around, you guys are the only reason I stayed sane. I may not show it all the time, but don't ever think that...that...you're not like brothers to me, ok?"

He raised his head at that declaration, feeling a strange lifting emotion for a second, before his past, his dark ugly past, came racing in to crush it down, siphoning any ounce of happiness he might have been feeling away.

"Yeah, I hear you...just...there are some mistakes that stick around...that make all the other ones amplified, and they just build and build until they just make you feel like a piece of shit every time you make one."

He got a pair of narrowed eyes, like they were honing in on something, and it made him shiver.

"...Some mistakes? Something you want to talk about?"

The damn man was too fucking smart.

"No...I mean, maybe...but not right now…"

Jack stood there for a few more seconds before sighing and shrugging. "Alright...just don't worry about the Lizzie thing...it was just a fuck up due to miscommunication and unfortunate circumstances. Come on, we need to catch up."

 _Catch up_... _except he still felt like he was being left behind._

* * *

"You guys going back home?" Jack asked the three of them while she perched herself on the seat of his truck, wondering what it was that Shawn had cornered Jack for.

"Yeah, probably. You and her are going out to dinner right?" Chris responded, opening the door of the Maserati.

"Casamia again, I think. Lizzie liked the pasta there," causing her to look and smile.

"It was very good."

"Alright, I guess we'll see you when you get back. Say hi to Christian for us."

The Italian car's headlights lit up the parking lot as Chris turned the key, and they drove away, the car turning out of sight as she watched it go, and then her vision jerked and blurred when Jack tugged her out of the truck, pushing her against it with his arms around her, not even giving her a chance to speak before his lips crashed against hers.

Then he just kissed her, didn't put his hands anywhere else, didn't try to sneak them under her clothes, didn't even slip his tongue in her mouth, just kissed her tenderly, and it made something flutter inside of her, the fact that they could share moments like this and be just as content.

"That was fun, hmm?" he purred when he broke away, planting one last peck on the corner of her mouth.

"What, the kissing or the escape room?"

Even if it was just a kiss, it still left her heart jumping and a flush on her cheeks.

"Well, both I suppose."

"Mmm, maybe you should kiss me again," and then he closed the distance between them once more, his body pressing a little tighter against her.

"Are you sure you want to go to dinner, or do you want to just make out in a parking lot against your truck?" He gave her a breathy little laugh, laying his head on her shoulder. "I am pretty famished. Though I do still expect a quickie in-" he leaned around to peer inside of the truck, "- _well_ , this is the wrong vehicle, but this would do."

"Don't worry, the McLaren isn't going anywhere love."

A wolfish grin spread across his face. "Neither am I, darling, neither am I."

She mirrored his grin, reaching out to stroke a finger across his jawline. "Well, that isn't entirely true. Remember we are both going to be on a plane to Lima in two days-ish."

"Of course darling, how could I have forgotten? Mmm, palm trees, walks on the beach...plenty of rum," he purred, every single item punctuated by another soft touch of his lips. "Can't wait. Speaking of, we should probably pack tomorrow."

"Probably. Maybe when we get back, I can finally show you my house. I would even venture a boast and say it is prettier than yours."

There was an indignant expression on his face when he pulled back a few inches. " _Prettier_ than my house? Now, this is something I have to see."

"I mean... _your ship_  was prettier than all of the other ships on the water, so I feel like it makes us even."

His arms tightened around her, his beard scratchy against her neck when he buried his head there. "The Pearl was pretty, wasn't she," he whispered, sighing.

Suddenly an acute emotion invaded her, like a strike of lightning, at the reminder of her half-plan to restore the ship, and she had to rein herself in from stamping her foot on the pavement because of the frustration of being so close yet so far away from it. "The  _prettiest_ , love."

They stayed there close to each other for a second longer before he pulled away, jingling keys at her. "Let's go get something to eat, hm?"

"Alright," she replied, then lunging forwards with a giggle, trying to knock the keys out of his hand and failing when he jerked them away too quickly, sticking the tip of his tongue out at her. She gave him a glittering smile and climbed up into the passenger seat.

* * *

"Arturo, so nice to hear your smoker's voice."

"Hola, Suzuki. We've acquired lodgings in London. I trust we are still meeting in the parque...Hedgemead or something wasn't it?"

A call was placed through to Suzuki as soon as they had checked into the hotel, even though he had also called her when they landed in this dreadful city.

"Yes, Hedgemead Park. 11:00 P.M...I...actually have a question. Forgive me if I am overstepping my boundaries, but  _I_ trust you are keeping the details of all this to yourself?"

He laughed, both impressed and annoyed by her ability to needle him. "All they know is that we're here to get the evidence. They do not know from whom...they don't even know you're here. I'm guessing they think that Jack still has it, from their limited knowledge."

A relieved sigh could be heard on the other end of the phone line. "Good, can't have this compromised in any way, and the possibility of a loose mouth…"

"Precisely why I didn't share the information with them. But I'm curious, who do you think they might be talking to?"

"I didn't say they would. But when you have something as important as Gabriella on the line, any negative outcome is magnified. I just hoped you were smart enough to take precautions."

"Si, si, I understand. I'll see you at 11,  _alone_."

The line went dead, and he put the phone back in his pocket, thinking about what she had said.

This  _did_  need to go as smoothly and efficiently as possible, the evidence going from Suzuki to them without interruption, Gabriella going from them to Suzuki, then both parties going their separate ways without interference. It was a simple enough plan.

Turning, he walked back through the sliding glass door into the main room of the hotel.

"We have a plan?"

"Si, Rafael, we have a plan. We'll get the evidence by tonight, and leave by tomorrow night. Rápido y eficiente."

"Good. Think I can go get a beer?"

"...I don't see why not. London is a big enough city. Just stay close to the hotel."

* * *

Aiko Izumi had been beautiful, a kind of frail beauty, delicate like the lace that had adorned her wedding dress, like she was one with the sunlight when she would walk down the beach at their home in Tottori, gazing at the sky as though she expected it to open up and consume her.

Maybe one day it would have, for as sure as the days had stretched in without her, she was the only one he could fathom being accepted by the heavens so readily. A kind, gentle woman, who would stop and smell the flowers she saw, raise her hands up and smile like the world was perfect, and just the way she would wipe that little bit of ice cream off her face when she finally closed the lid…

She didn't eat ice cream anymore.

Neither did he.

It was as though she had taken the good side of him, the better side, the side that had fallen in love with her, to the grave, like a fragment of himself lying beside her in that smooth blackwood coffin, as what was left behind stared down with everyone else, stared at the ugly representation of death, at the empty shell of a person still looking like that had in life, but without the light of the soul shining through.

What  _was_  left behind?

Who was he now?

He was a man sitting in a bar in London with a full glass of beer that he hadn't even touched, wearing an expensive suit, watching the rain start to fall outside.

Or maybe he was a man imagining all the ways that he could torture the woman that had gotten his wife murdered.

Did it really matter?

To part of him it did, the part that still wanted that title, that power of the position that was dangling in front of him, the part that was willing to risk coming to another country to fix a problem, rather than resolving it comfortably from the couch of his flat in Tokyo.

It was a cruel twist of irony that the fracture in the fabric of his reality would be in London, the same place that had the dark stain of his wife's death on it.

 _Liz_. That was her name, or at least all he knew of it.

Aiko had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. At least, that was what Sasaki had kept saying over and over. Aiko had just gotten in the wrong person's way, it was just an unfortunate circumstance, it hadn't been  _personal_.

He had acquired an item of considerable value, a rare original Italian painting, for the head of another Yakuza sector, but he  _hadn't_  known that there had been more than one set of eyes directed to it, and the woman named  _Liz_  hadn't been prepared to let it go.

On a rare occasion, for reasons that he preferred not to remember, he had been out of the country, and he had left two guardsmen to watch over Aiko, as she had been staying in his personal home alone without him.

The only details he cared to remember about...was that the guardsmen that he had chosen were no longer capable of doing their job, so two others had been appointed from the Yakuza sector that the painting was going to without his blessing, and when  _Liz_  had slipped into his home in the dead of night to interrogate his wife about the painting,  _they_  had walked away with the assumption that she was a traitor, working against the Yakuza, and against them specifically.

She had been taken to their  _bosu_ , and despite her pleading, wasn't believed.

Human error was all it had taken, a misunderstanding of what had been going on, misinterpretation, or whichever word could be assigned to it, and a woman too ruthless in getting what she wanted to stop and consider the consequences.

He couldn't take revenge on human error, couldn't make it pay, not that the guardsmen responsible for accusing his wife of Yakuza treason were still living, nor were the men that had executed her. The entire lot of them had been sentenced to death by Sasaki the moment he had found out what happened.

But  _he_ could take revenge on Liz, on the woman that had threatened his wife, because if she hadn't been there, if she hadn't taken it upon herself to break into his home, Aiko might still be alive. The executioners and messengers to the executioners were all dead and buried. The architect was the only one left.

 _First_ , before anything could happen, this  _evidence_ problem needed to go away, and for that, they needed information.

"Izumi-san?"

"Gomen'nasai, Koji. Just thinking."

"I see. Do you have a plan?"

He stared at the man over the rim of his beer mug. "We need to _know_ something first, anything about what is going on, or we're entering the situation  _buraindo_ , blind."

"Not going to be easy to get information...not with these circumstances. The police are watching everything very closely with the way that the evidence was stolen, and-"

But he wasn't listening to Koji anymore, wasn't even looking in his direction anymore, because all of his attention had been drawn to the man that had just entered the bar, the man with the very distinct hand tattoo, the Sinaloa shield...he was  _cartel_.

The Cartel was in London, for the same reason they were in London, to  _fix_  the problem.

"I think we just found our way in. Kōun no megami, lady luck is on our side tonight, gentlemen."

The other two turned to look at the man, the same targeting expression crossing their faces that was on his, like a sniper finding their victim far earlier and with much more ease than expected.

It should not be too difficult to extract a little bit of knowledge from him, and he doubted that anyone would notice that he was missing too quickly.

Sending a look at Koji and Tsubasa, a look that outlined the entire plan silently, a plan of efficiency, a quick drag into an alley with a knife and a threat of death for noncompliance, not that they were  _going_ to let him live afterwards, he got two quick nods back, and then nothing else in the bar mattered besides what that man was doing with every second that passed until he got up to leave.

All he needed to do was call Sasaki to get the go-ahead for interrogation and elimination.


	24. It Surges Ahead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 24! Sorry for the little delay, I was busy writing the prequel for this, I simply couldn't let it sit in my head any longer. The updates should go back to a week/week and a half now. :) As always, I would love to know what you think.

September 16th, Wednesday Night, 9 PM

* * *

The tumbler of scotch was balanced on the edge of the bar counter, each pound of a fist nudging it closer to tipping. It was dirty, had smudges on it, the kind of glass that sits in a cupboard collecting dust and grime until one day the bartender finds it and doesn't give enough of a fuck about cleanliness to not use it. As it was it only had a small amount of scotch in it...sending it over the counter wouldn't waste much...just destroy a disgusting tumbler and make the black linoleum floor mildly hazardous.

Not that scotch was worth preserving...it would take eight hours and a lot of mixing to find something in the bar worth preserving, and that including the people. People like the Cartel gesu yarō, or the young drunk blonde to the right who was trying to score a little druggie shoot up and fuck, and even the bartender, one of those men who  _had_  drank everything in the damn bar at one point or another because the haze of alcohol was better than living in this piece of shit reality. Maybe the blonde, druggie, and bartender could engage in a threesome and take each other out.

Or he could do it.

_No._

More important things to worry about.

The  _Cartel_  member, to be specific.

He had been watching him sip on the scotch and make eyes at the blonde for twenty minutes. Without a doubt, the druggie had more of a chance. Not that  _Julio_  was making much effort anyway, to do really anything come to think of it. Everything he did was lethargic like he was on the verge of sleep.

It took a certain kind of patience to observe someone, to watch them with the attention to detail necessary to learn their entire scope of behavior from them sitting at a bar drinking scotch.

He was a very patient man.

The lack of patience only ever results in mistakes, mistakes that he couldn't afford to make.

Patience lets you learn that  _Julio_  would only last so long under duress with the way he kept glancing around the bar like he was on the run, lets you learn that  _Julio_  is easily intimidated, probably used to being left out... _Julio_  would tell him anything he wanted to know with just the right amount of pressure.

And  _Julio_  wouldn't be missed.

Not by a bullet, and not by people.

Just like the druggie, the blonde, and the bartender.

And the person responsible for stealing the evidence.

Or  _persons._

_And let every deity known have no mercy on Liz because he wouldn't._

The bar stool teetered dangerously when Julio rose, downing the rest of the scotch and shoving the tumbler back on the counter so hard it slid to the other side, nearly falling off again. The bartender gave him a dirty look.

His gaze followed Julio from the bar to the door, never leaving him, directing a quiet "let's go" at the other two when the door opened to drizzling rain outside, and then he carved his own path through the crowd, slipping out in time to see the man's back getting farther away down the sidewalk.

"The alley," was all he said, inclining his head to the bright neon sign about 100 feet away, and the side street just a stretch farther from it. Almost holding his breath, he barely let his shoes touch the ground...closer... _just a little closer_...close enough to see Julio reach in his back pocket for his cigarettes, close enough to watch them drop to the wet concrete when he shoved the man out of sight, heard his sucked in gasp of surprise, felt his unfortunate attempt to struggle, cut off almost before it began by a knife pressed against his throat and a strong hand clamped over his mouth.

The struggling ceased immediately.

_Easy to intimidate indeed._

"You scream, you try to escape, I'll kill you violently. You cooperate, I give you a painless death."

It was a very humbling moment, watching a man make that choice, between two different kinds of death, watching a man accept that he was going to die. Some men get angry,  _didn't want to die yet_ , some men feel peaceful,  _it would finally be over_ , and some...some men become  _happy_ , like they were dying  _for_ something.

A person can't  _die_  for something.

Not enough people understood that.

Once you are dead, anything that mattered in life is gone. Reasons, ideas, thoughts, intentions, agendas... _all of it_ , like it had never existed.

Death is death, the most meaningless and meaningful thing life has to offer.

People in organized crime also understood the beauty of having a choice. Just like they looked death in the eye knowing it was what they had signed up for.

"It also goes without saying that if you don't tell me what I want to know…"

He let the threat go unspoken.

Then removed his hand from Julio's mouth.

"What's your name?"

" _Rafael_."

...not Julio. He would have gotten the laugh of his life had it actually  _been_  Julio.

"Rafael... _so_ , what brings the Cartel to London?"

"What brings the  _Yakuza_  to London?"

_Maybe not so submissive after all._

"Same thing, I'm guessing. A  _problem_."

Nothing else needed to be said about  _that_.

"We will keep this short. Where is the evidence?"

Didn't really expect him to know, but even his ignorance could tell him something.

"You know as much as I do. Something is happening in Bath, algo importante."

"That's only about a two-hour drive from here," Tsubasa said.

"Indeed. Are you at least trusted enough to know how and why it was stolen,  _Rafael_?"

The man's eyes jerked between the three of them as if weighing his options for the last time. Then he realized he had no options, but apparently, the knife digging into his throat had failed to cement that idea in well enough.

"My boss propositioned a woman to retrieve it. She had something she wanted, we had something we wanted. There was an exchange of services."

"And the woman's name?"

"Japanese.  _Suzuki_. But she isn't the one responsible."

This was already getting more complicated than it needed to be.

"Then who  _is_?"

"She...hired someone else to complete the job. A ladrón profesional. His name is Jack Sparrow. I know nothing else about him."

He had heard the name before, but couldn't recall where or when.

" _Jack Sparrow..._ and he is the only one?"

"Si,  _el trabaja solo_. Dangerous, apparently."

 _That_  much he had already figured out. It takes a special kind of person to orchestrate the chaos right in the middle of London that he had watched on the television and walk away without anyone knowing anything.

"And what exactly did Suzuki  _want back_?"

"She has a special interest in Gabriella Magana, the daughter of one of the cárters superiores. The father was... _causing a problem_ , so my boss decided to... _reintroduce him_  to the chain of command. Suzuki was asked to convince my boss to return her, and he saw an opportunity for mutual benefit."

"So. Suzuki is asked to get the evidence for the girl, and then hires a third party to do it instead. Now the evidence is Kaze ni,  _in the wind_ , and something important is happening in  _Bath_."

"Si."

One last look into his eyes, a few more seconds of observation...he had all the information he was going to get.

" _Good._ Koji?"

A black cloth bag over his head, a 180 turn to face the brick wall, and a clean bullet in the back of his head.

 _Death is also very simple when allowed to be_.

"Get rid of him."

* * *

Things were moving too quickly.

A professional thief... _where had he heard that name…_ in Japanese, at least among the Yakuza, thieves were sometimes called shadoutorikusutā, or  _shadow tricksters_. Comparable to magicians, they were able to embed themselves with so many false identities and decorate their history with enough smoke and mirrors to make them hardly even exist.

There was a reason that he hadn't found  _Liz_  yet.

Sparrow was working alone...he had no partners... _henchman_  or something similar, maybe, but  _friends_...that seemed out of the question. The man was too good to have distractions.

"Have you heard of this man before?"

He glanced over to find Koji regarding him. He wouldn't quite call Koji a henchman, he was too smart for that, but he lacked the experience.

"... _No_ , and that worries me. I know nothing about him."

Didn't know where he stood in this game, how he might retaliate to pressure, how deeply he was involved…

Thieves, much like assassins, were very good at covering their tracks, regardless of who knew they were involved. Just because he had the man's name didn't mean he had any kind of advantage over him. At least  _not_ yet.

And Suzuki.

Long black hair, always wore suits and specialized in killing suits.

He'd met her once or twice.

As for the evidence, there was a high possibility that any of the pieces on this chessboard had it... _her_ , Sparrow, the Cartel…

A chessboard that had too much power laying on it. The Cartel, not dismissable, Suzuki, a master hitwoman, Jack Sparrow, whom he did not know the full scope of yet, and  _himself_.

The threads and connections between the rest of them could make everything before tomorrow either succeed or fail.

But  _Suzuki_  was the heart of all of it, she set up the deal, hired Sparrow...and she would not be easy to find…

"So, are we making a trip to Bath?"

 _Had to_ …

"That seems to be our...only option at the moment. We need more information."

"And the woman?" Koji asked, staring out the rain-streaked window of their car.

It was too risky to perform a more focused find and retrieve. She was trained to watch her surroundings.

"Stake the city out. I want one of you in each highly populated area. We need to make a web, and see if we can catch her in it."

"If we find her?"

" _Do not_  let yourselves be seen, but do not lose sight of her."

* * *

They had arrived at Casamia just as the clock had struck 9:50.

" _Hey_ , you picked the food last time.  _My turn_."

Jack watched her over the top of his menu for a moment before laying it down and raising his eyebrow at her. "As my lady wishes."

She mouthed an 'oh my  _god_ ' while fighting a smile and shaking her head, scanning the menu for something that looked appetizing.

"Not really a  _lady_."

"Mmm, ladies are boring anyway. Corsets and haughty attitudes...oh,  _wait…_ "

Her eyes stopped at the pasta section, raising to regard him with a pointed look.

"That was  _before_  I met you."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but you still  _had_  a haughty attitude even  _after_  you met me."

The menu was forgotten for the moment. He'd successfully wound her up.

"How so?"

He made a show of counting on his fingers. " _Well_ , let's see. You refused to be in my cabin when I propositioned you-"

' _It should be a dress or nothing, and I happen to have no dress in my cabin.'_

"-I was trying to find  _Will-"_

"-haughty. You blatantly acted like I was beneath you when I asked you to marry me-"

"-you were  _joking_ -"

"-you challenged me to a swordfight when I refused to give you the letters of Marque-"

"-what else was I supposed to do-"

"-you  _traded_ me to Beckett for Will-"

"-it was the logical thing to do-"

"-and all of this is really just boiling down to pure attitude in general. You had attitude on the island, you had attitude on the  _Pearl_ , you had attitude in Shipwreck Cove, pretty much always, except when you were asking me questions or-"

"-and you love me for it," she finished in a tone of finality.

"Love you for the conclusion to that sentence, or your attitude?"

"... _Both_ , I think."

His eyes were glittering.

"Well, unfortunately, you're wrong. I don't need a reason to love you, I just  _do_. But I can give you all of the reasons why I  _adore_  you...we'll be here all night and never get around to eating, but I can do it."

She was momentarily poleaxed, wondering why dinner always seemed to end up with him making her heart swell to the point where it threatened to combust.

" _And_  I would have won that swordfight, by the way, your training from  _Will_  being utterly irrelevant, especially since the other interpretation of that sentence involved  _no_  training from Will, and would have resulted in  _me_  training you...that counts as winning right?"

The fact that he did eventually train her in  _that_  discipline notwithstanding, except the training involved her mouth more than her hand, and the 'training' was more just very loose attempted guidance, 'attempted' here meaning that his voice had been temporarily diminished.

"I definitely meant the bladed kind when I said  _sword_ -"

"-not that Will had anything worth being called a  _sword_ -"

"How would  _you_  know?"

His face was growing more and more pleased with himself by the second.

"I don't, I just enjoy dragging him whenever possible. He was a  _hero_  type, they are made to be bullied just a little bit."

"And you just had a dirty mind.  _Persuade me_ indeed."

" _Had?_  Think you need to change your tense. Besides, are you suggesting you  _don't?_ Why don't we talk about which one of us took advantage of modern technology to  _sext_  the other just to torture them on a plane."

"And why don't we talk about which one of us gave the other a taste in a parking garage and then left them frustrated."

"Just going to slide in the fact that  _someone_  gave me a striptease to Nine Inch Nails-"

"-you  _loved_  that."

"Of course I did."

Not ready to stop their teasing just yet…

"You did eventually  _train_ me…"

He sat back in his chair, looking like he was weighing options. "Now to  _what_  are you referring to?"

"Handling a sword."

"Yes, yes, I did teach you some sword fighting techniques, great fun."

_Damnable man, now ignoring her more lewd meanings on purpose…_

"Mmm...you taught me how every inch of the sword is important...the hilt, the length of the blade, and the way you hold it."

"I'm surprised you picked up on all of it as well as you did.  _Holding_  a sword with your mouth is quite the challenge."

"Maybe I just have a natural talent for holding swords in my mouth."

"How do you know that? You've only ever had experience with  _one_."

"Are you suggesting I should expand?"

" _Never_."

Then a genuine smile spread across his face. "Did you pick out something to eat yet? You've had five minutes to look now."

"I did, but I feel like this is an inappropriate setting for it."

His eyes dropped to the table, the smile turning into a smirk astonishingly fast. "There is a tablecloth…goes down to the floor, would hide you pretty easily."

"... _That's_  all fine and good, but that doesn't help you."

"Help  _me_? What would I need help with?"

"The tablecloth doesn't have a mute button."

 _Checkmate_.

"And I'm  _not_  boring," she added, trying to hold in laughter.

He finally rolled his eyes. "I would  _never_ accuse you of that."

It sparked a memory, one that she remembered very fondly.

"The difference  _here_  being that you're serious, unlike when I said I would never accuse you of being arrogant."

Then his eyes went to the ceiling while his lips puckered in annoyance when he realized what she was referring to. " _I_ was just showing off."

"...showing off. Right. That's why you had to refer to your technique as perfect about eight different times, and literally, choose the  _highest_  rock to-"

"- _No,_ I chose the highest rock because it's  _fun._ "

"Regardless, showing off is the same thing as arrogance. And you will never convince me that it was necessary to perform a dive like that to demonstrate just before teaching me how to do it."

"...It really wasn't  _that_  high…"

"Oh come  _off_  it, it was at least 25 meters."

"The world record is 60-"

"- _Now_ , maybe-"

"-Come to think of it, I should take a stab at topping the record one of these days. I'm sure I could beat it."

She glared across the table at him, considering all of the ways that she could explain arrogance to him  _again_.

" _Confidence_ , not arrogance. And I think I was a good teacher. I didn't make  _you_  dive off of it, did I?"

"...No, I suppose not."

It had been 1895, in Thailand. She had been watching Jack dive into various bodies of water for nearly 150 years, and it had been about time for her to learn. So, she had asked him to teach her.

The tablecloth tickled her hand as she slid it across the table to grasp his, stroking her thumb over his skin. "You  _are_  a good teacher."

He watched their hands for a moment, a distracted look in his eyes, and then glanced up at her again. "What makes you say that?"

Anyone else and she would have accused them of fishing for compliments, but she knew Jack genuinely didn't know, and it made her feel a little frustrated... _not_ with him, but with everything that had happened in his life that made him uncomfortable with acknowledging his own skills...at least when they involved other people. He was incredibly good at being comforting, but she was positive that he had no idea, he really  _was_  a good teacher, and so far he was an exemplary... _boyfriend_...she barely held back the giggle at referring to him using that word.

" _Well_ , for starters, you have an incredible level of patience. No matter how many questions I have, you always answer all of them, and no matter how many times I mess up, you're always willing to explain again. And you explain things very succinctly... _and_  you can always find a different angle to approach something if I'm not getting it."

She watched him take it in, everything she said, watched his face settle on mild confusion.

"...Why would anyone  _not_  do all of that? Especially when it is the love of your life...if I wasn't patient, if I didn't answer your questions, or explain well, or...it would make you angry, you wouldn't learn anything, and it would be just a giant waste of time…and I just really couldn't stomach being an asshole to you…"

The menu appeared to suddenly become fascinating to him, but she could tell that he wasn't even looking at it, could tell that he had retreated into his mind, could even tell what he was thinking about... _the hotel_.

 _Dammit_.

" _Hey_ , I appreciate it, for what it's worth. I have no idea how I would have learned how to shoot as well as I can, or how to clean a gun, or how to repair a ship, or how to  _sail_  a ship, or how to dive, you even taught me how to  _swim_ better. You taught me  _a lot_."

For a second, she thought that he was going to try and say that some of the credit went to her…

"...Thank you, love."

Confusion was coloring her face now.

"Thank you? For what?"

His hand clasped hers a little tighter. "Just...just for loving me, I guess...for taking some of the darkness," he paused to make a gesture at his head, "in here away."

She didn't know what to say to that...thankfully, Christian arrived at their table just in time.

" _Ah_ , I see that you haven't gotten rid of him yet."

"There isn't a strong enough force in this world. And it is usually me that he has to put up with, not the other way around."

"Well, regardless of who has to put up with who, I wish the two of you many years of happiness. Now, have you decided on something to eat?"

" _I_  have...I don't know about him. The lemon salmon sounds lovely."

"Salmon, excellent choice. And don't make the lady wait all night, Jack."

Jack slapped his menu shut and handed it over. "I'll have the salmon too then."

Once Christian walked away with their order, Jack turned to her again, another sparkle in his eyes. "I have to put up with  _you_?"

"Well, yes, I mean...my crazy sexual appetite, my proclivity for taking you to cold places, I constantly push your buttons-"

"-Hang on,  _your_ crazy sexual appetite? Darling, have you  _met_  me? Or did you momentarily forget who your significant other was?"

"Oh, I must have  _momentarily_  daydreamed that I was actually dating a reincarnated James Norrington. His name  _is_  on your credit card."

He shuddered and pulled a face. "Can you  _imagine_  being Mrs. James Norrington? And I  _enjoy_  it when you push my buttons."

"But not the cold places? And it wouldn't have been all that bad..."

"Maybe not for anyone else, but you would have died of boredom. And I can put up with anywhere as long as you're with me, love. But no, warm will always be better than cold. The only time that isn't true is when you have been sitting in a hot tub for a bit too long. Nothing better than jumping into a cool swimming pool."

"Nothing better than pushing you into a cool swimming pool."

* * *

A half-hour later a waiter brought out a tray with their salmon dishes, steaming hot and smelling beautiful.

"Can I get anything else for the two of you?"

"No, we're fine, thank you," they both responded at the same time, digging into their fish as he walked away.

" _So_ , Halloween is coming up. Think we should dress up?"

He finished chewing and swallowed before fixing her with a suspicious stare. "What  _exactly_  did you have in mind?"

"I'm not always scheming you know," she said with a dramatic eye roll.

"You are when it comes to me."

In truth, she did have a few costumes in mind.

" _Fine_ , I may have had a thought. Since you basically are him in human form already, and we could fashion together his outfit without too much trouble, you  _could_  dress up as Loki."

"Loki...like  _Avengers_  Loki? Tom Hiddleston Loki?"

She nodded, picturing Jack in the black and green leather suit.  _Sexy_. But…

"You do realize that I would have to shave for that? Not sure you could handle it...not sure  _I_  could handle it. Do you know how long it's has been since I was cleanly shaven?"

"I've never seen you that way, so either it was before I met you, or at some point when we were not together. I'm sure I could put up with it...unless something happens to you when you shave...do you get covered in scales or something?"

That got a laugh out of him. " _Scales_...no, I don't get covered in scales...I just don't look...I just look  _different_."

"You looked different when you combed your hair out- _remember how long that took_ -and when the bandana came off. I got used to it."

"Took forever. And the hair and bandana don't take away as much as my facial hair, trust me. I would have to make myself a little paler too. You would be dating a ghost compared to what I am now."

"Well,  _I_  think you could pull it off. You in leather... _or_  you could also just wear the suit he had in the first movie, with that green scarf thing."

Now she really was curious to see him cleanly shaven.

"Why exactly do you think I am like him?"

And  _now_  he really was fishing for compliments. She was happy to oblige.

"You are very smart, you frequently pull pranks on everyone that you can, you enjoy mischief a little too much, yet you have a lot of layers under the surface."

"Pranks...that reminds me, I should start doing that again."

When they had first started using showers, she had discovered how hilarious it was to turn the cold water on while Jack was in there.  _He_  didn't find it all that funny, but it had her in tears the first couple of times. And Jack rather enjoyed pretending that there was a disaster and then laughing hysterically at her panic.

"I mean...just not on me, right?"

"No, no,  _especially_  on you. Don't worry, I'll allow you to prank me back."

"Oh, you'll  _allow_ me? Well, now that I have your permission..."

They both took the last bite of their salmon just as Christian reappeared.

"Was everything to your liking?"

"Excellent as always, Christian."

* * *

They stepped into the cool September air, listening to the wind whistle around them.

"Keep in mind," she teased, "any pranking you do on me will only give me more fuel to get you back worse."

His only response was to suddenly stop and tug her into his arms, pressing his mouth to his before she even knew what he was about. Her body melted into his kiss, his hands on her back to push her into him.

She didn't care about the chilly air or the fact that they were standing on a busy sidewalk, or the case, or any of the problems that were waiting just on the outside of her safe little bubble. All she cared about was Jack and their future together.

When he finally broke away, he was grinning at her. "I'm counting on it, love."

Reaching up to play with a chunk of black hair that had been pushed into his face by the wind, she smiled back at him. "So, what should we do while in Lima?"

"Oh, I don't know," he paused to grasp her hand, "we could do some sailing, hiking, swimming, whatever you want to do."

"Remember,  _whatever I want to do_  has turned into some pretty dangerous adventures. For example, the time when-"

"-we...well, for lack of a better word,  _broke_  into Philae? It  _was_  fun though. Dangerous, but fun."

1913\. They had been in Egypt for a month without actually doing anything to speak of. She had been bored. A bit too bored. Cue a suggestion that she had known Jack would find exciting. Then cue them finagling a guide to get them out close enough to the temple. Once they had arrived, it had been nearly impossible to contain her enthusiasm. " _Think we could just set up shop in here and stay?"_ she remembered Jack asking. " _Oh, sure_.  _No one will notice. I mean, this is Egypt. They'll think the voices inside are just undead mummies."_

Then his comment about the  _sand_  getting everywhere…

"I'm just saying, giving me free reign to come up with more dangerous ideas might be ill-advised."

"Mmm," he sidestepped to press into her as they walked, putting his mouth right next to her ear, "but I like you when you're a little dangerous."

Finally, they reached the truck, and he kissed her again before opening the door for her.

As she climbed up, something connected with lightly with her bum, making her yelp and twist around to find Jack grinning again. "What?" he asked, unable to act innocent.

"You're insufferable."

"You love me though."

* * *

She really did hate stop lights, especially when they took as long as this one.

" _Today_ ," she whined, leaning back against the seat in annoyance. They were only about 15 minutes from home, and she wanted a shower, and Jack, perhaps at the same time.

"Patience, darling."

"It's been red for five minutes."

He turned to smirk at her, turning it into a smile at her fluster.

 _Scroll, scroll_...nothing interesting on her phone...nothing in the news, nothing anywhere...she could hear Jack whistling... _annoying_...cute and annoying...something changed in her periphery, and she looked up to a green light, but the truck wasn't moving. "Jack, the light's green-"

Her blood chilled.

The orange streetlight was reflected in his eyes as it stood tall on the other side of the intersection.

He wasn't whistling anymore. He wasn't looking at the light.

He was looking straight ahead at the black sedan partially hidden by shadow in the parking lot across the street.

The clock on the dash went from 11:15 to 11:16, the light turned red again...the sound of the truck idling was  _so loud_ …

...and everything else was so quiet.

Not another person in sight, not a bird in the sky, not cars in the distance,  _nothing_.

And he was still looking there, at the sedan…

"Is that-" she finally managed to say when she pushed the trapped oxygen from her lungs, but Jack cut her off and stepped on the gas pedal at the same time.

"-Yeah."

Don't look at the car. Look straight ahead, act normal so they don't suspect anything, turn some music on...she reached out to spin the volume dial and let the radio play, not paying enough attention to identifying the song, the roaring in her ears too loud anyway.

Every muscle in her body was hitched, suspended on high alert, she measured the breaths that she took, focused on the beating of her heart, listened for something,  _anything_  behind them that…

... _no_ , they hadn't been seen…

* * *

When they finally pulled into the driveway of his house, when he pushed the garage door opener and pulled in to park...when he turned the key and let the reverberation of the engine bounce off of the concrete walls, she finally allowed herself to relax.

"Jesus Christ," she breathed, inhaling and exhaling like she had been deprived of breathing for too long.

"They didn't see us...they didn't... _fuck_ …"

His hands were white where they gripped the steering wheel still, his mouth set in a hard line.

 _Relax_ , except now the panic was setting in,  _why were they here...what were they doing here..._ needed to get out of the truck...needed to run...didn't even register opening the door and climbing out...barely registered the dizzy feeling...the hot stain on her cheeks...there was a pain in her head…

...heard a noise somewhere behind her...couldn't breathe... _couldn't think_ …

Her eyes stung when she clamped them shut, a gasp jumping out of her mouth when something warm wrapped around her... _arms…_

 _Get away, get away_ , but they were too strong, held her fast...a voice floated into her ears, saying her name...the dim light of the garage flew back into her vision when she opened her eyes to find Jack standing in front of her, his hands cradling her face.

The ground underneath her feet felt hard again, she could smell the remnants of exhaust from the truck, the world evened out... _breathe love, breathe_  Jack was saying, and then he was pulling her to him, nestling her head into his neck, stroking her hair.

Tears were forced out of her eyes as she calmed down, wiped away as she shook her head back and forth across his shirt in a swaying motion. "Are you sure that was them?" she whispered, her voice scratchy.

"I saw the driver. It's them."

She clutched Jack harder, feeling like everything was being reversed, all of their plans, like they had been running towards a future and had just been shoved back to the start...didn't even realize that she had stopped breathing again until she heard Jack…"You're safe, we're safe here, darling."

"I'm...just so  _frustrated_."

"They didn't see us...come on, let's go inside."

* * *

Despite Jack leading her, she walked as though there were lead weights attached to her feet, like she didn't have the strength to pick them up and put them down anymore…

Past the kitchen, into the hallway...into the bedroom…

She  _never_  had panic attacks...could feel the anger at herself coursing through her sapping whatever energy she had left.

In the bathroom now, the door making a soft clicking noise as it closed.

But she just stood there, in the middle of the room, not even caring enough to take her own clothes off.

_Why was she so fucking tired?_

"Can't shower with clothes on, Lizzie," Jack said over his shoulder as he pulled two towels out of the tall cupboard.

She shrugged, twitching her head back and forth in an attempt to say a hundred things, and heard his sigh and a mumbled affectionate "making me do all the work".

"Arms up," he said as he slid his hands under her t-shirt, pulling it up and over her head, one hand going behind her to unhook her bra, throwing it to the floor, then pushing her jeans and knickers down her hips at the same time.

Slowly, some cognizance flowed back to her as he stripped and walked over to turn the shower on. Willing movement into her legs, she followed him, slipping her arms around him and nuzzling her face into his back, whispering an "I love you"...it was the only thing that made her feel safe at the moment, knowing that he was still here with her.

She was stronger than this, felt ridiculous...but she also found comfort in being able to be ridiculous around Jack without him seeing it as a flaw. He loved all of her, no matter what state she was in, felt it in the way he pulled her against his body as the warm water cascaded over them, felt it in the way he gently stroked her back, in the way he kissed her head…

"We're fine, we don't have the evidence anymore, they don't know where we are, don't know about us-"

"What if someone talks, what if-"

"-then we'll deal with it. Nothing can conquer us, darling, you know that. Me and you, we're like Shipwreck Cove... _impenetrable_."

She finally smiled, felt the tension leave, heaved a great sigh and leaned further into him. "Aye,  _Captain_."

"There's my Lizzie."

But she could tell that he was worried too, in the small moments where his touch was distracted, faltering...he just hid it better than she did.

They would be okay... _they would be okay_.

"I'm just...so afraid of losing you when I just got you back…"

"You're  _not_  going to lose me, Elizabeth Swann. I swear on my life and my sometimes still black heart that you are  _not_  going to lose me."

She looked up from his chest into his face to find him staring down at her, a strange sort of fire burning in his eyes, not like the poisonous orange and green from the intersection...just a determination…

"You know we can't make promises like that-"

"-that wasn't a promise, that's just a fact. And  _I_ can make whatever promise I want."

Willing to change the subject, she remembered another promise that he had made.

"Speaking of promises, when do you suppose we are going to use that lovely tub of yours?"

A slow smile spread across his face. "Tomorrow night,  _I promise_. We'll put some candles on, some music, and tell pirate stories all night."

"Mmm, sounds lovely."

* * *

The bed had never looked so inviting as she toweled herself off, stealing appreciative glances at Jack while he did the same thing.

"Remember that time when we were holed up in that inn in Tortuga...I think you were having some work done on the Captain's cabin on the  _Pearl_...and Scarlett and Giselle literally burst in on us?"

He glanced up at her just as he threw the towel in the laundry basket in his closet, his mouthing working curiously. "Of course I do, you were on top of me, and you invented some very colorful curse words when they shocked you into stopping."

"While you had to hold yourself back from strangling the both of them."

"Two of my least favorite women in the world had interrupted sex with my most favorite woman in the world. I  _really_  wanted to strangle them."

"Why do you suppose they-"

"-they were unable to wrap their heads around me having sex with someone else that wasn't either of them, so they had to see it for themselves. Nasty little vultures. What brings the memory up?"

It brought a smile to her face. "Just admiring the fact that I'm the only one in the world that gets to see this," she paused to draw an imaginary line from his feet to his head with her finger, "whenever I want."

"Well, Scarlett and Giselle are dead anyway. And don't give me too much credit, I have an angel living in my midst that has for some reason decided to stay on Earth with me,  _only_  me."

Her skin tingled at his words, knowing that he meant them at face value, instead of just using them as flattery.

She followed him over to the bed when he slipped under the comforter. "I'm no angel, Jack," she said quietly once she had her head nestled against his shoulder, wondering if he would remember…

"You are to me," he whispered back, a warm smile in his voice.

"You did remember."

"That night remains as one of my best, if not  _the_ best, so if I ever forget, well,  _anything_  about it, I'm most likely dead."

The skin of his chest twitched as she played with it. "We're old."

He snorted at her blunt comment. "Ancient, love. Positively frail, decrepit, over the hill, we're practically  _fossils_  at this point."

"Mmm, nice looking fossils at least."

"Perhaps the fossils should think about sleep, because I'm about to-" he was cut off by a great yawn, followed by a continued attempt to say "fall asleep".

She leaned over to kiss him this time, stealing his goodnight kiss, giggling at his muttered " _thief_ ", before he turned the light off.

* * *

Her black boots crunched against the twigs of Hedgemead Park, the trees making strange shadows along the path she was walking on, like long gnarled fingers stretching across the concrete reaching for some unknown entity.

The evidence box kept slipping down her side, a hiss of annoyance piercing the air every time she had to hoist it back up, even though none of that mattered, the box didn't matter, the horrible cold London air didn't matter, the precariousness of the situation didn't matter, because she was  _so_ close to this being over, to all of this being forgotten.

_Arturo had better be here._

A yellow 'under construction' sign assaulted her vision when she approached the little clearing, almost more offensive than the barely hidden greasiness under the black suit and cigar smoke. It wasn't even physical grease, just a nastiness that lived inside of the man, pouring off of him like stink from a decaying body.

" _Suzuki_ , and here I'd thought that the harsh winds of London had killed you."

"I've been to the Himalayas, you miserable  _mijimena_. London can do nothing to me."

"A lot of people have been to the Himalayas."

His face was strangely bright under the park lamps, accentuating the age lines.

"And there are a lot of Cartel bosses. Neither of us is truly unique because of where we come from or what we have done. Compared to each other, however, I find mountains to be more impressive than sucking down cigars and bought pusshī."

"As a dangerous man myself, I find your profession far more impressive than  _climbing rocks_."

Fixing him with a glare, she shifted the box to rest against her stomach.

"Keep that in mind. Arturo. If any of this does not go my way, if you don't hold up your end of the deal, you're going to wish that the only impressive thing about me is climbing mountains."

"Always the consummate assassin."

A weight lifted off of her when he took the box, testing it in his hands.

She thought there might be some grand speech from him, or something else that might waste her time…

"Give my thanks to Jack. Perhaps you should give your thanks to him as well. And his Mujer."

"And Gabriella?"

"Tomorrow morning. 10 A.M., there is a little gas station about 10 miles from the London Airport. We will meet you there with her."

"That's it?"

"Se acabó."

He turned and walked in the opposite direction.

Only a few more hours, a plane ride, and a drive, and she would have Gabriella back to her parents.

* * *

Just a peek, just a quick peek…

The long skin-colored curtain was heavy when she drew it to the side to look out of the window, seeing what she could of the city below.

Arturo had told her to stay on the bed, but she didn't always do what he said.

Skin color, a strange green color on the floor, the walls were chalk white, and the bed sheets were the same color as the wine her mother drank.

It was nothing like the colorful inside of her parent's house, with her mother's dragon statue collection, dragons with long necks, short necks...some had wings, some didn't, they were all different colors, fiery red, a turquoise jade, like the jewelry she always begged for at the bazaars, a sunflower yellow, and onyx black…

Her father had a ship collection, only about four or five of them, but she liked to study them, liked to run her fingers over the little sails, liked to imagine little sailors on them, liked to imagine what they might look like in the ocean...one of the ships was a black one...it looked as though it had been burnt at one point. There were a couple of handsome cherry wood ones, and one was completely white. " _This one is meant to be pintado, painted_ ," her father had explained.

She hoped she would get to paint it one day. It would go nicely with the black ship. " _I would like to sail a ship one day. Crees que podría? Could I?"_

He had laughed and told her mother, making her laugh too. " _Perhaps a little sailboat when you are older, Gabriella."_

When you are older…

Her parents said that a lot.

You can see the ocean when you are older, you can drive your own car when you are older, you can have your own money when you are older...

She wondered if sailors, if people back in the days of pirates... _ladies_ , gentleman, those sorts...she wondered if  _they_ were told that they could only do things when they were older…

Some of the pirates she had read about...they had started being pirates when they were children, grew up around other pirates...they didn't sound like they had any rules...some of them became pirates, perhaps they were tired of having rules…

 _Rules were boring, just like this room_.

If only she had a book to read…

Often, in the books she read, pirates were called  _criminals_ , bad men, a few bad women, as though there was nothing about them that was  _nice_ …" _Some people view the world as en blanco y negro, Gabriella, black and white. There will always be people like that._ "

Black and white...criminals and good people...ladies and commoners, rich and poor...the world seemed like it would be a little more interesting if people didn't try so hard to divide themselves up. There was enough dividing done at school to bother with it anywhere else, she thought.

 _Pirates_  didn't have to go to school.

Of course, most pirates couldn't read either.

Even so, she fancied that she would like to be a pirate, sail the seven seas, have her own black ship, command her own sailors...she would be a good captain...muy agradable y respetuoso,  _very nice and respectful_ , just like the sisters said at school.

Some stories had pirates kidnapping ladies, princesses and aristocrats…

She wouldn't do any kidnapping, she didn't think. Unless the princess wanted to be kidnapped...being a princess seemed dreadfully boring, so perhaps she would be doing them a favor by kidnapping them.

No more fancy dresses, no more ugly hats...once she had pointed to a picture of a lady in a dress while sitting next to her mother at the library. " _Why is her waist so small?"_

" _Well, she's wearing what's called a corset, they are apretado_ , extremely tight.  _You lace them in the back and they give you a nice figure._ "

Corsets sounded stupid.

The uniforms at school were bad enough.

She tried to like school, tried to listen and learn and pay attention, but the world was so big out there and she wanted so badly to see it…

The city below was dark, lit up only a little with streetlights and neon store signs. She could see the outlines of a few people walking along the sidewalk...she wondered what their lives were like, where they were going…

It kept her from wondering where  _she_  was going…

When the door clicked, she jumped back from the window and scrambled back on the bed just in time to see Art walk into the hotel room with a box in his hands.

"Ahh, little Brielle, still where I left you.  _Bueno_."

She didn't say anything, just watched him watch her for a moment, with his greasy eyes, then followed him with her own as he crossed the room to the little table where one of his cellphones sat.

He picked it up and pressed a few of the buttons on it, before bringing to his ear.

" _Hola, Rosalina_ ," he said after a few seconds. "Tengo buenas noticias para ti. Little Brielle is coming home."

"Tomorrow, she'll be back in Mexico by tomorrow night."

"Si, si. I hope your husband has learned his lesson."

" _Bueno,_ wouldn't want to cause your family any more trouble."

"Certainly, un momento."

She snatched the phone out of his hand as soon as it was within range, and couldn't decide what to say first.

" _Mama!_ "

" _Brielle,_ _mi bebé, oh I miss you. Your father misses you too."_

" _Is he there?"_

" _No, no...not at the moment."_

Her body slumped a little.

" _Oh...Arturo says I am coming home tomorrow."_

" _Si, él dijo eso. We can have popcorn and we can watch Treasure Island if you want. I know how much you love that movie."_

" _I can't wait, Mama. Te amo, se levantó de un jardín español."_

I love you, rose from a Spanish garden. It was the first full sentence that she had been able to say in  _español_. Her mother loved roses.

" _Yo también te amo, mi pequeño girasol."_

I love you too, my little sunflower.

She didn't really like sunflowers, but her mother still liked to tease her by calling her one.

" _Arturo wants the phone back. Bye bye, Mama. Te veo mañana._ "

See you tomorrow.

She could hardly wait to see her mother's smile again, to hear everything she had missed, to read all of her books again, to see her father, even to go back to school.

Tomorrow, when the sun came up and the sky was orange, turning a shade lighter every time she looked at it, when the air was still cool with that burst of warmth from the sun peeking through the clouds...when you could see the fiery star on the edge of the horizon…

...as Arturo made sure she was in bed, when he turned the light off, she had one last thought before she fell asleep dreaming of Mexico.

_What did the horizon look like to a pirate on their great ships as they watched the sun ascend above the water line in the morning..._


	25. Expose Us All

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 25! Hope everyone enjoys! :)

September 17th, Thursday Morning, 1 AM

* * *

Her steps were short and even, the footfalls barely making a noise on the cement of the sidewalk.

_It would be over soon._

_Tomorrow._

Rosalina would have Brielle back,  _she_  would have Brielle back, and the Cartel would go back to being the Cartel, not that they ever really stopped.

Toxic, the entirety of them, just like the Yakuza. Organizations like that only breed disease, a poisonous fume that infects all of those involved, even the children. It winds it way into them, insinuating itself into their lives so that they barely notice the grasp it has on them, treat it like it is part of them in the same way their love for their family is... _good_ ,  _honorable_...it was sickening watching a person from the outside get caught up in all of it and change…

It makes a person wonder about the steadfastness of character, of integrity, it makes a person wonder if the human psyche and the concept of personality are far more fragile than they are made out to be.

Nicolás Magana, Gabriella's father.

An exuberant man, always looking for the fun in life, always looking for ways to make Rosalina smile...then money trouble had slowly sapped the life out of him, until one day he made a desperate attempt to help his family...started selling prescription pills...got so good at it that the Cartel had approached him and offered him an opportunity…

Rosalina had begged him to say no, had begged him to decline...but the profit from it had even looked attractive to her, not that she would have ever admitted to it. Life in the Cartel, working for them, could be very comfortable as long as you were smart enough not to fall, not to get caught in the violence and the corruption.

Or smart enough not to try and leave.

But that's exactly what Nicolás had done. He had watched his daughter live under lock and key, had watched his wife live with that hidden fear in her eyes, only visible when she would glance out of the window for a second at the sound of shouting, he had watched himself deteriorate into something entirely different than what he once was.

Walls had gone up, he rarely ever smiled anymore...it had been like watching the color bleed out of a photograph.

_Walk, walk...needed to get back to her hotel, needed to get off the street…_

That disgusting man...Arturo...but even she could see the sense it made from his perspective...to calm a dog that had remembered that it was on a leash...he had to remind Nicolás of his place, remind him that he could never leave it…

It was just the cruel reality of the world that taking things away brought things back...

 _Around the block now_...her car was parked on the other side of the Queensberry Hotel next to an alley, only a few blocks away.  _Just needed to get there...then drive to her hotel._

Streetlights were stationed about every ten feet, she had been counting them as she went past, a habit of hers, counting…

There had been eleven lights since she had left the park, and she estimated that there were at least twenty-five more before she made it to her car…

_Listen for noises, look for anything suspicious...shadows, other footsteps...nothing…_

There were hardly any people at all, only a couple standing outside the little shitty bar she had passed…

Twenty-one streetlights now…

Twenty-two…

The orange of the light on the corner of the parking lot cast streaks across the black paint of her sedan, the dark town reflected in her window, but she didn't have time to focus on trivial things... _needed to find her key...which pocket had she shoved it in,_ glanced up when she shoved her hand in the inside pocket of her black suit jacket, just in time to see movement in her car paint, distorting the orange reflection, didn't even have a chance to react when she was shoved against the hard door of her car with a knife pressed into her neck, all of her breath expelled from her.

" _Quiet,_ _asashin_ , wouldn't want to slice that pretty neck of yours."

It was nothing more than a whisper, but it struck her like a whip, the sharp pain in her neck blending with the adrenaline coursing through her...but, just then...the world started to calm...and she was falling...falling away...

* * *

The smells of...wherever she was... _oil...must, stale air..._ it was all she could focus on... _sounds_...distant footsteps, the creaking building, the buzzing of the fluorescent light above her.

Her breaths hurt from the dust she was inhaling, the dryness in her nostrils, she felt  _frail_.

But all she could  _see_  was a never-ending expanse of black, of nothingness...her eyes were sore from rubbing up against the blindfold, watering from the scratch, from the pressing against her eyelashes…

She was sitting in a chair in front of some kind of table, in a fairly small room...the couple of times the door had opened, it hadn't taken long for the gust of air to hit her.

Couldn't remember coming here...all she remembered was being shoved against her car...and a voice…

A zip tie was wound around her wrists, binding them together around the table leg...didn't know how long she had been here, had only come to...about twenty minutes ago.

It must be about 1 A.M.

Footsteps now...getting louder, coming closer to the door...a man, with their heavy gait, thin though, was able to pick their feet up and put them down evenly, didn't have to fight their weight.

The door opened, air rushed into the room...silence for a moment, then a thud as the door closed.

She angled her head to where the person must be standing, waiting for them to do... _something_.

"I do apologize for the blindfold, Suzuki, but I'm sure you understand why it was necessary."

Her next immediate inhale was sharp, burning her nose, suspended in her chest for a slow second, then exhaled with a whispered " _Izumi_ ".

That calm silky voice, poisonous with the most infuriating amount of cockiness...gōman-sa... _arrogance personified_.

"Taking time off from killing Japanese prosecutors to...whatever it is that you're going to do to me-"

"It was necessary. But we aren't here to talk about me. We're barely here to talk about you, in fact."

_What did he know?_

He watched her, sitting there, staring straight ahead into nothing, though he knew she was still on high alert, listening, thinking...she was still  _dangerous_.

"I see."

There was a scratch on the floor... _the other chair_ …

"I am on a time schedule here, Suzuki, and I know this might be difficult for you, but please,  _try_  and cooperate, otherwise I will make your  _career_  go away very quickly."

_She didn't doubt it._

"I'll do my best,  _baka_. And the blindfold  _was_  necessary. I'm glad you remember."

The risk of her escaping with her sight increased dramatically, but without it, she was effectively rendered harmless for now, for as long as he needed her.

"Your talents are hard to forget. You kill better than anyone else I know."

"I appreciate the acknowledgment."

More silence.

"To begin, I want to know why an  _assassin_  of all people, a cold-hearted bitch, would  _care_  about a child."

_How much did he know?_

"Your opinion of me is disheartening. What does it matter?"

"Curiosity. Seems so out of character. Similar to you  _hiring_ someone else to do a job for you."

"I wasn't the best person to do it."

"And Jack Sparrow  _was_?"

It was pointless to deny anything now, he knew enough to know she would be lying...all she could do was manipulate what he didn't already know.

"I wouldn't trust anyone else."

He grunted, a small grunt that someone makes when they are satisfied with the conversation.

"You know, I have been trying to figure out where I have heard his name, but it just isn't coming to me."

"He is very good at making himself hard to pin down, both in name and in location."

"But you know? Where he is located?"

_In the outskirts of Bath, in a lovely house with a statue of Poseidon, a collection of very nice cars, and enough weapons to provide to a small army._

" _No_ , I don't. I have never had the privilege of learning."

"Well, good to know that he and I have something in common. Neither of us trusts you."

"He doesn't trust anyone."

_Except for his two employees...Elizabeth…_

"I've heard, he works alone, is that correct?"

"... _Yes_ , alone."

A good thirty seconds went by before he spoke again, and she knew he hadn't believed her.

 _Fuck_.

 _That_  was something he hadn't expected. It was only a minute hesitation, running through a hundred responses in the space of two seconds, but it was enough.

"You hesitated. He has a partner."

 _A weakness, something he could exploit, threaten, chip away.._.

"...A partner only, and he only sees her when there is a job, never any other time. He is not romantically inclined."

"And how do you know?"

_Had to tell him, to put him off of Elizabeth's scent…_

"He and I have...a history."

"A history? Didn't know you were inclined to the thief type."

"He's not unattractive."

 _Far from it_.

"And does he trust this partner?"

"Enough to work with her, but personally,  _no_."

"Tell me about him."

The request threw her off guard, both because it seemed like a question only suited for a longer conversation, and because she didn't quite know how to describe Jack.

"He is...incredibly guarded,  _very_  intelligent, smarter than you most certainly, a master with firearms, a master strategist, could probably have my profession if he was inclined. I...don't know enough of his history to tell you anything substantial, but I can tell you that it would be in your best interests to tread lightly if you are going to involve him in anything."

"Smarter than me? I doubt that. Though, his evidence heist  _was_  impressive. Tell me, was his  _partner_  involved?"

"I don't know. I hired him to do the job, not tell me how he planned to do it. Now he has done it, and I am waiting on him."

"Which brings me to my main concern. Where were you going, and where is the evidence?"

... _If she told him that Arturo had it, Izumi would go after him, putting Gabriella in danger._

_Sorry, Jack._

"As far as I'm aware, he is still in possession of it, and I was on my way to update someone."

"The Cartel? I see. Are you going to acquire it from him or are they?"

"He is...being difficult. He wants more assurance that he is no longer involved in  _your_  mess once he hands it over. However, like I already told you, confronting him is ill-advised."

"I will decide what I find to be ill-advised. So far, you have told me nothing that makes me hesitate as far as he's concerned."

"His  _partner_...she should be a concern to you as well."

"And why is that? I'm barely concerned about you, what makes her any different?"

_Elizabeth would see herself dead before Jack was harmed, you ignorant imbecile._

"She is not untalented herself."

"So you know of her?"

"I have...done a little background checking. She's a thief, like him."

"Do you know what her name is?"

"...Elizabeth. I do not know her last name."

His head turned very slowly to regard her, letting the name saturate his mind for a moment. The buzzing light became unusually loud, time seemed to slow down, and the two stories of his life converged into one.

 _Elizabeth_. A thief. A professional thief. One that Jack Sparrow trusted enough to work with.

"... _Liz_ , for short?"

"I...suppose, yes."

_Could it be her?_

_Could it be that easy?_

"So, Jack Sparrow has the evidence, you do not know how long he will have it, and your part in this is entirely done until the exchange happens for little Gabriella?"

"That's right."

"Well, like I said, I decide who is dangerous and who is not. Jack Sparrow will not stand in my way, and neither will Elizabeth.  _Especially_  not Elizabeth. I'll find him, one way or another."

"I'll make sure to stop by your grave, if Jack leaves anything left to bury."

He didn't respond, only smiled at her, the same smile she gave to her targets just before sending them to death's door.

* * *

The triumph of moving on to a new target was exhilarating, but now he had  _two_.

"Koji, Tsubasa, Naoki, get rid of her. Her bell is ringing."

Suzuki, unfortunately, had to die, in case she was lying, in case she was going to run off and  _warn_  anyone. No great loss. There were other assassins.

" _Hai_ , we can hear the sound too."

The three of them stepped past him, readying their guns.

 _Goodbye, bell-wood_.

As he walked away from the room, out of the building, into his sedan, he wondered about everything for a second, and then wondered about how to proceed next, in the reflection of everything.

They needed that evidence... _but_ , something new had been brewing inside of him...a new angle...the girl... _Gabriella._

_They could use her._

All he had to do is figure out where the evidence exchange was taking place, and where Suzuki was meant to collect her.

Then  _he_  would collect her.

He also needed to know more about Jack, his  _new_  adversary.

 _But_ , all of that paled in comparison to his glee of the possibility that he had finally found  _Liz_ , she had fallen into the palm of his hand without any effort on his part. Lady Luck truly was on his side, and he was not going to let her down.

Soon, he would be saying goodbye to her with his own gun while she stared up at him begging for her life.

And if Jack got in his way, he would suffer the same fate.

* * *

The clock was ticking, a rather annoying sound most of the time, but now it seemed...tolerable.

He was grateful for the dark...it offered him some kind of solace, some kind of assurance that the rest of the world was turned off, not present, that he had found a pocket of existence where he could let his thoughts run and bleed together without the threat of needing to explain them or even understand them.

Sometimes he felt like his own mind put him on trial, made him examine himself as though he were a criminal defending himself against a murder charge.

In the exposure of the day, he threw guards up, walls, barriers between himself and  _people_ , so many that they would need to spend longer than the construction of the Pyramids to break them down.

Three centuries made you very good at protecting yourself.  _But_ , the lack of sleep did wear on him sometimes...

And like all fortresses, walls, barriers, blockades, he had a weakness, a key, a crack in the stone…

' _Are you the pirate I've read about or not?'_

' _Are there any truth to the other stories?'_

' _You spent three days lying on a beach drinking rum?'_

His head shook, twitched a little, a half proud half annoyed smirk turning the corner of his mouth up.

Even then, his love had wormed her way in...the fire in her eyes, the refusal to back down from him...the way she had almost stomped on his heels as she chased him through the jungle...of course, he had given her a rebuttal of 'welcome to the Caribbean' like none of that was true, because then he had been so deep in denial that it was happening…

 _Yes,_  he had spent three days lying on a beach drinking rum, and he took pride in the fact that he eventually got her to do the exact same thing, many times,  _among other activities_ , of course.

' _And we will be positively the most fearsome pirates in the Spanish Main…'_

That first island,  _their_ island, the memory he had used to get her through her first time...to get him through that exquisite torture too…

And then she had burned his bloody rum.

And he'd still loved her despite it.

Loved the way she was laying on his chest now, her hair tinted blue in the moonlight coming through the slit in the curtains, sleeping peacefully.

He hadn't really allowed himself to get  _worried_ about the consequences of the job...but when he'd held her in his arms, when he'd felt her frustration and her panic...something changed.

Something that had kept him awake for two hours…

The prospect of losing her terrified him like nothing else...he'd gone through every possible scenario that could happen now that the Yakuza were here...what if someone did talk...what if…

But it all ended with him swearing to himself that there was no way he would let anything happen to her, regardless of who found out what...and it was true, he would throw the full force of his defensive skills into whatever enemy had the unfortunate notion of harming her.

_Wouldn't even think twice about it._

She was the only thing, the only light that he let in,  _really_  let in, other people, other things, they all had occasional peeks, but she had an all-access pass to his heart, his soul, mind... _anything she wanted._

He just  _hated_  not knowing. Hated not knowing the facts, not knowing what everyone else knew, despised being in the dark, just waiting for them to show their hand...but this wasn't the type of game that he could go on the offensive in...hunting them down was not an option.

Retaliating  _was_.

Had to wait. Wait until something happens, until something shifts.

_Had to start taking the situation seriously, from all angles. The cops, the Yakuza..._

For the moment, though, the world was quiet and he had the woman he loved in his arms,  _safe_ , he'd made sure of it...nothing would stop him from protecting her.

Just like nothing would stop him from holding her, running his fingers across the locks of hair that were splayed across his chest, from trailing his fingers down the curve of her back, over the gentle swell of her breast pressed against him, from enjoying the warm breath she exhaled onto his skin.

He was starting to feel comfortable acknowledging that she would be as hell-bent protecting him as he was for her. That she loved him as he loved her. They really were two peas in a pod.

Slowly, his body relaxed into the mattress, started to feel heavy...thoughts started to drift away, started to get blurry, abstract...something about salt...ocean waves maybe...how they used to feel, how they used to sound crashing against the hull of the Pearl...how thunder used to sound in the distance…

Distinct claps, three of them in a row...just after a fierce flash of lightning...three... _why was the thunder so loud...why did it sound so close…_

Not thunder,  _knocking_. Someone was knocking... _where_ …

He almost coughed on the breath he sucked in, his entire body going rigid...listening…

Three more knocks... _violent knocks._

On his front door.

A quiet murmur came from the sleeping figure on top of him, a sleepy "wassat"...she tried to lift herself up to listen, but he shifted her to the side with an equally quiet "I don't know, stay here", then he was rolling to the side to open the nightstand drawer, grabbing the pistol that lay next to an empty carton of cigarettes and a whiskey flask, silently climbing off of the bed and striding to the door, pausing to pull on a pair of sweatpants and a white t-shirt.

He opened it in one smooth swing and slipped through it, sending a look over his shoulder to make sure she had listened to him... _at least for a few seconds_ , and then very nearly pointed the pistol at Chris, who almost collided with him coming up the stairs.

"You're lucky I have excellent reflexes," he hissed, staring at the front door, allowing a small smirk at Chris's muttered 'fuck off'.

"Who is it?"

The stupidity of the question took a second to break his concentration. "Oh, you found out about my new x-ray vision? I was keeping it a bloody surprise, dammit."

"Wouldn't surprise me…"

They both turned just their heads to find Shawn standing at the top of the stairs, rubbing his hands over his face. "Whoever that is, they have just pissed off three people-" Shawn started, before he cut him off.

"-I wasn't sleeping-"

"-Yeah, because you're a bloody insomniac-"

The distant faraway sound of a ringtone floated through the air, failing to grab their attention until it got close enough.

" _Jack_ , your phone is ringing. It's Suzuki."

He turned to find a still sleepy Lizzie standing behind them, holding the Xperia out, smiling a little at his muttered "thought I told you to stay in the bedroom".

"Where's Ringa?"

"Sleeping still," he answered, a fresh wave of annoyance making him jam his thumb into the screen to swipe the 'answer call' slider over. Before he could even get a word in, she was already shouting at him.

" _Jack_ , for the love of god, open the door."

"You're alone?"

" _What-_ of course I'm alone."

Choosing to end the conversation before he got too annoyed with her to let her in, he swiped the end call slider and shoved his phone into his pocket.

The door swung open to reveal her standing there, her usually stoic appearance disheveled and…

"What the fuck happened to you?"

Her hair was down, she had a forming bruise on her neck, and there was a large gash on her chin.

Rather than respond immediately, she rolled her eyes and jabbed a finger at the inside of the house.

"Fine, fine, get in here."

* * *

Fuck,  _fuck_ ….fuck.

The possibility of this conversation going badly was looming over her head, and a hundred different scenarios of Jack vehemently telling her to vacate his house were playing in her head.

_Had to tell him._

_The truth, all of it._

Chris and Shawn were staring at her like they expected her to pull out 87 guns and start shooting them...and Elizabeth was watching her cooly like she didn't quite know what to make of her.

_The feeling was mutual._

She stood in the expanse of floor between the kitchen and the living room, feeling like an escaped science experiment. Jack had disappeared down the hallway once the door had closed, and the other three weren't talking to her.

Which left her with the only thing she could do... _was_  already doing... _worry_ about everything and anything. Something she was not accustomed to doing.

Jack returned a few seconds later carrying... _medical supplies_ , she realized. Some surgical glue, antiseptic, a damp washcloth...

"Go on, go sit on the couch," he threw over his shoulder as he grabbed one of the kitchen chairs, following behind her when she complied, pausing next to the door to flip the living room light on. The other three chose a spot on the opposite couch while Jack placed the chair just in front of where she was sitting, settling onto it.

" _So_ , going to tell me what happened, or am I just here to play doctor?" he asked, muttering a quieter "lift your chin up". She winced as he cleaned the cut there, the antiseptic stinging a little.

"I... _yesterday_ , I arranged to drop the evidence off with Arturo tonight. That went smoothly, we did the exchange in Hedgemead Park, just a few hours ago. He'll be on his way back to Mexico early tomorrow morning, I'm guessing."

"...by smoothly, do you mean he gashed up your chin and tried to strangle you before you handed the box over?"

He scooted a little closer to apply the glue, gently holding her head still with his other hand.

" _No_ , Arturo didn't do this. The...the Yakuza are here-

His shoulders squared a little, a hardness entering his eyes.

"...I know. Lizzie and I saw them earlier-"

Chris's eyes widened behind Jack, a little bit of panic washing over his face.

"You  _saw them? Here? As in they are here in Bath?"_

"No, I astral projected myself to Japan and saw them there."

The funny comment was clearly ignored.

"For fuck's sake, and we're just sitting here twiddling our thumbs?"

"You're not going to have any thumbs to twiddle if you don't calm down.  _Obviously_ , they aren't going to find the house, or I would have prepared for such a scenario."

He turned back to her, inspecting the bruises on her neck. "These... _damn,_ can't do much for these except put some ice on them."

Lizzie got up to presumably fetch some while Jack focused his eyes back on hers.

"You gave the box to Arturo, and then left. What then?"

"I was walking back to where I had parked my car and was just about to open the door when I was attacked and sedated from behind. I came to in some kind of building...a warehouse or something."

"Thanks, love," Jack said as Lizzie came back with the ice. "Do you know what they injected you with?"

"Diazepam I'm guessing, based on how fast I was out," she answered, pressing the ice against the bruise. "They blindfolded me for obvious reasons. Then I was interrogated. Listen, I think someone in the Cartel talked. Not willingly, at least not entirely, but he knew things that he wouldn't have known otherwise."

" _He?_ "

She sighed a heavy sigh that meant she would rather not talk about him or be reminded of his existence under any circumstances.

"You've already heard  _of_ him, the man who killed the Japanese prosecutor. His name is Tatsuo Izumi, next in line for one of the head branches of the Yakuza. Real slimy man, but  _smart_."

"It's interesting that he's here himself. Tells me that there is a lot more wrapped up in this for him and the Yakuza than just a trafficking problem. Well, what did he ask you, and what did you tell him?"

"From what I could gather, the Cartel man told him about you, obviously told him that Bath was a place of importance, and told him about my deal with the Cartel."

Just in the way Jack hesitated before he asked, she could tell that he was wary of her answer. "And what did you  _tell him_  about me?"

"He...wanted to know if I knew where you were located. I said no. Then he wanted to know if you had a partner...either a working partner or a... _romantic_  partner. I said no."

"Good-"

"-he knew I was lying, Jack."

His head rose slowly like he hadn't quite heard her at first. "About-"

"About Elizabeth. I had to tell him, that you had a partner, but I swear that I said you were nothing more than professionals."

At first she thought he might shout at her, but instead, he sighed through his nose, rising from the chair to go into the kitchen.

" _Go on_ ," he said when he returned with a tumbler of rum, scooting the chair to the end of the couch, keeping it facing her.

"I told him a little about you personally, about how you're good at strategy, good with guns, and I told him that it would be in his best interests to avoid confronting you."

She waited, waited for him to ask for more, and hoped that he wouldn't.

_Had to tell him anyways._

"And? What else?"

 _Stall_.

"Mind if I have one of those?"

"You can get it yourself."

" _Fine._ "

The walk to the fridge seemed precious, like she was having her final meal before her execution.

"He wanted to know about the evidence."

"And you told him you no longer had it?"

"...yes, after a fashion."

The rum was already gone when he got up to put the tumbler in the sink. "What do you mean?"

But her brain was already accelerating faster than she could maintain it. "Listen, please listen to me, Jack. I  _had_ to tell him, I had no choice-"

She paused when she saw him go very still, the light from the living room only illuminating his face enough for her to see his eyes narrow.

"Tell him  _what_?"

A sick feeling bloomed in the pit of her stomach...too smart...he was too fucking smart.

"That...I told him you had it. The evidence. I told him that you were waiting for-"

Three seconds was how long it took him to process it. She counted them, holding her breath at the same time.

"- _Jesus fucking Christ_ , Suzuki," he hissed, tangible heat pouring from his voice. "You fucking sold me out-sold  _us_ out...fucking  _lied_...what's your excuse, since I'm guessing you didn't act that goddamn stupid  _just because_."

After a pregnant moment where she held her silence, he gave her a ' _well?'_  expression, and she took a deep shuddering breath.

"That handgun story I told you, when I came here to pick up the evidence...it wasn't true."

More anger flooded his face, his body tightening until it resembled a snake about to strike at something that was too stupid to stop provoking it.

"You have exactly until I say I'm done listening to explain yourself."

"I'm friends with a Cartel family, the  _Magana's_. Five years ago, they entrusted the protection of their daughter, Gabriella, to me during periods when I spent time in Mexico.

"Nicolas, the father, has been trying to leave the Cartel for some time, and he turned the heat up recently on Arturo, making demands and threats. Lines were crossed, and Arturo needed to do something to show him his place.

" _So_ , Nicolas asked me to negotiate her return, Arturo saw an opportunity to get something from me, the evidence, I hired you and Elizabeth, you did the job, and now she's being returned.

"I  _couldn't_  tell Izumi that Arturo had the evidence, because that would have put Gabriella in danger."

She watched him put the pieces together, watched the disbelief turn into indignation, watched that turn into barely controlled fury, but still, he only stood there, glaring at her with poison in his eyes.

"...Are you telling me, this entire time that fuckbag was holding a  _child_  hostage? The entire  _goddamn_ time I was working this job, a  _child_  was in danger? Think that might have been good to mention when you  _fucking hired me?_

...opened her mouth to try and get a reactive word in, but he kept going.

"Great story with the fucking handgun, and you're lucky I believed it, and the only reason I  _did_  was that I was in a hurry to enjoy my life with  _her_."

" _Jack-_ "

"-why the fuck didn't you tell me...why didn't you think for one second to tell me that a little girl was at stake here? 'Oh, by the way, if you don't pull this job off, it might turn into a fucking murder case'-"

"-I didn't think you'd  _care_ , dammit. I didn't think you would have wanted to get involved."

"What the fuck is that supposed to m-nevermind, fuckin' nevermind." Then he did turn away, dragging both hands through his hair, holding them there for a second, breathing heavily. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Elizabeth rise from the couch, the other two staring at the scene with a parade of emotions sliding in and out.

She turned away as Elizabeth calmed him down with a hand on his forearm and some whispered words that she couldn't hear.

"You're  _sure_  you didn't give him  _any_ information about where to find us?"

"I swear it. I tried to remain as vague as possible, and I withheld as much as I could."

His eyes closed and stayed closed for a few seconds, until she heard a muttered  _"get out"_  under his breath.

" _Excuse me_?"

"I fixed you up, I appreciate that you did what you could to help, but you still broke my trust. I'm no longer interested in your presence. Get.  _Out._ "

The muscles in her legs became unresponsive for the moment, half from wanting to be stubborn and half from feeling like he was being unreasonable. But she also knew that when Jack made up his mind, there was no arguing.

"Fine."

She could feel Elizabeth's eyes on her as she walked into the living room to snatch up the set of keys to the car she had escaped with, feeling the anger at being thrown out starting to creep into her.

Just as her hand touched the doorknob, the deep urge to retaliate with  _something_  buzzed in her, and she turned around.

"I'm not the only one keeping secrets."

Only a few seconds, a few beautiful seconds was all it took for her to see the realization of what she was talking about wash over Jack's face, but she didn't take the time to linger there, flicking her eyes over to Elizabeth's instead, challenging her to figure it out.

_I had him too, once, if only for a night. You're not that special._

_Lies, her brain told her, but she never backed down without detonating something._

* * *

" _The T.V. is fucking broken."_

_Jack was halfway through throwing the remote back on the table next to it when she looked up, her wet hair still sending rivulets of water down her tank top._

" _Then I guess we're not watching T.V."_

" _Tired of staying in shitty hotels," he snapped, disappearing back into the bathroom for a second, making a racket with the cupboards._

_When he emerged, he was shirtless, only wearing the black P.J. pants he had changed into, giving her a full view of all of his tattoos. The little swan on his shoulder, the poem, the dragon, the sparrow on his wrist, the ship on his shoulder...each one was a mystery, only part of a greater mystery…_

_He always seemed so...frustrated, like he was running to something that he was never going to catch...like he was never quite fulfilled in life._

_The bed sagged as he sat next to her with a damp washcloth, a little tube, and his flask of rum._

" _Do you want me to do it?" she asked, inclining her head towards the cut on his arm._

_His body went still as he considered her offer, but then he shook his head, uncorking the rum. "No, I got it."_

_The only indication of pain from him as he poured the rum over the wound was a very quiet hiss, with nothing from her but silence while she watched him seal it with the surgical glue after washing it._

_She wasn't sure what made her do it...maybe it was the long-hidden attraction she felt for him, maybe it was to distract herself from the crumminess of the hotel room, maybe she had a strange urge to help him, to release some of his tension, but regardless of the reasons, she had no idea of his reaction when she raised her fingertips to his shoulder, pressing the pads of them into his skin lightly._

_Panic shot through her arm when he jerked away, turning around to glare at her, giving her a brief look inside of his torment, the slow burn of the weight sitting inside of him pouring out of his eyes._

" _What are you doing?"_

" _I don't know, I don't know what I'm doing. I just-"_

" _-I'm not available."_

_Very few moments in her life had ever felt as crucial as this one did, but she had...something had to happen...he couldn't go on barring himself off like this...and she would go crazy if she didn't have him at least once._

" _It doesn't have to mean anything," she said to the carpet, daring to look up at him through her eyelashes. "It won't mean anything."_

" _Then what the fuck's the point?"_

" _The point is not everything has to mean something. Sometimes things can mean nothing and still help."_

_She wasn't even sure if that made sense to her._

" _I don't need help-"_

" _You walk around like you're climbing a hill that just keeps adding more hill before you can ever reach the top. It will help."_

_The mattress bounced back up when he rose, walking over to the window to stare out of it, his arms crossed over his chest._

" _You have to understand that you're not...you can't."_

" _Can't what?" and her voice was nothing more than a whisper._

" _Can't be attracted to me...you secretly want this to mean something more, but it won't. Not to me."_

_It took her a second to realize that he had agreed, that he was willing._

" _I know."_

_Did he hear the dejectedness in her voice?_

_Did it matter?_

_All she wanted was to see him without that hard outer shell at least once, but she had no confusion about her ability to make it to his heart...whomever or whatever had barred that away was not giving to anything._

_She rose too, still shocked that this was happening, and crossed the room to stand behind him._

" _Just a bit of fun, just...a distraction," she was whispering as she trailed a fingertip down his spine until he turned around._

_The ends of his black hair were still damp from his shower earlier, though she couldn't fathom why she had noticed that detail._

_She hadn't even realized she was stepping closer, leaning forward, until his palm pressed against her chest. "One condition. You...don't kiss me."_

_Any other person might have been confused, but she understood. "At least, not here," he added, pressing his finger against her bottom lip. She understood that too._

_It was too intimate, for him. Someone else held that privilege, held it in a steel cage until the end of time perhaps, unless they returned._

_He must really still love her._

" _Alright."_

_Something like static electricity crackled in the room, a feeling of pure abandon...they were abandoning who they were for the moment, where they were, abandoning the bookends of events that had happened before and the ones that would happen after...not caring about any consequences...it was animal instinct, nothing more, and it was so liberating._

_And it still meant nothing, would leave no mark on history, no ripple in the pond. Once they left the hotel, it would be erased from existence._

_She braced one hand against the window behind him, and one hand carved a path down his torso to rub him through his trousers, and he held her gaze through all of it, a strange heat in his eyes as he started to harden, like it hadn't been brought to the surface in some time._

_Had to ignore the onslaught of ache between her legs for now...but god she wanted him...let that thought fuel her as she slowly dropped to her knees, trailing light kisses down the muscles of his stomach as she went, feeling them quiver...then her fingers were curling around his waistband, dragging the fabric down, barely sucking back the gasp of hysteria when his erection sprang free in front of her eyes, then she was swallowing him down too, pushing her lips down his length, the hotness and hardness of him making her dizzy…_

_Pushed as much of him into her mouth as she could when she heard his moan, when she felt his hands hold her head, guiding her rhythm, an empty push and pull between them, then he was lifting her off and walking her back to the bed, his hands on the edge of her tank top in a question._

_It was off in the next second, thrown somewhere, and the soft comforter pushed against her back when he laid her down, pulling down her pants at her raised hips, crawling up to rest his weight against her, immediately descending to her breast for one blissful second._

_Then he tensed, stopping just above her flesh, raising his head, shaking it, only a few twitches at first, then more adamant shaking._

_He'd gone too far...had crossed a toe over the line of things that only…_

_...only she, whoever she was, was allowed to enjoy._

" _Turn over."_

_She gazed at him in confusion for a moment before it was dumped on her._

_Wasn't even going to get the privilege of seeing his face, then._

_Would still take it, would take what she could get of him._

_As soon as she was braced on her hands and knees, his hands rubbed a path up the sides of her torso...then he was there, the tip of his length nudging her…_

_The bedsheets became trapped in her clenched fists as he slid inside of her with one smooth careful stroke, and it felt like her body had started on fire from the inside, her skin barely able to contain the heat, the exquisiteness of it, cherished the quiet "oh god" that spilled from him, but it sounded like it…_

_...like it was just for him, like it wasn't even the sex that was good, just the...something...the something that was finally releasing a fraction of tension within him._

" _Alright?" he whispered, buried inside her to the hilt, his hips pressed flush against her._

_All she could do was nod, sliding herself along his shaft with shallow thrusts._

_Didn't matter, nothing mattered...he was thrusting into her now, a steady rhythm...she raised her hips to accommodate him...felt so good...so damn good...pressed her face into the bed to smother her blistering moans, clenching around him when he pressed one hand into her stomach and switched to hard fast strokes, pounding into her, sending both of them spiraling towards something...a release...a death...a reincarnation, she didn't know, didn't care…_

_Bright lights exploded around her and she was away from the world just then, transcending, shattering, putting herself back together just to shatter again...the equivalent of hitting the ground from a towering height when she collapsed onto the bed, Jack following on top of her._

_They both laid there in their own separate worlds, a divide between them, then Jack's quiet gravelly voice next to her ear floated into her brain-world barrier. "Sorry, 'm crushing you."_

_Ten minutes later, they were back to where they started, sitting next to each other on the bed, their clothes back on._

_And he was staring at her shoulder, had been on and off for three of the ten minutes._

" _What's that tattoo?"_

_Everything was back to the way it had been like nothing had happened._

_At least she would have the memory._

" _It's a bell-wood tree. That's what my name means. Got it when I was nineteen, but don't ask me why."_

_There was something in his eyes though, a calm for the moment, like a storm tempered over a city, giving it peace before pounding it again with wind and rain._

* * *

Both hands became a barrier in front of his face, his head dropping into them with a soft " _why_ "...but she knew that the momentary blindside wouldn't subdue him for very long.

"What are you talking about"?

It came from Elizabeth, but Jack still drew her attention as he looked sideways, first down to the carpet, then to his girlfriend.

"Why the  _fuck_...of all the times to bring that up... _why now_?"

"You throw me out after I tried to  _help you_."

His eyes glittered with fire, with a darkness that reminded her why she feared him, feared that look...like he was being consumed…

"I'm still throwing you out-"

"I thought she deserved to know, especially after you patched me up so tend-"

The rest of the word dug into her throat with a gurgle as he charged at her, and only pure instinct alone allowed her to be quick enough, let her hand dive down to the back of her jeans, her fingers wrapping around the butt of the pistol she had taken off of one of Izumi's goons…

...but Elizabeth was quicker, training a small pistol on her first, a sharp " _Jack_ " sent towards him as a warning.

Jack's gun hovered halfway between being pointed down at the ground and being dug into her chin while his chest heaved in barely controlled rage.

" _What_  are you talking about?" Elizabeth asked again.

"Ask  _him_."

There was nothing more for her here, and she turned away, wrenching open the door and stalking into the darkness.

* * *

He wanted to throw things, wanted to hit something... _why_...didn't understand why she had to  _use_  that against him...like it had meant something...it hadn't meant anything...still didn't mean anything…

But now he was questioning...wondering why he hadn't told Lizzie...wondering if he should have told her…

Every time he had ever touched another woman after the damn hotel, he felt like it was a betrayal...like he was betraying her...and losing another part of himself…but then that ugly part of him argued that he could do what he wanted...didn't have to feel attached to anyone or anything...

Could have gone without telling her...but...now she was wondering too…

 _Fuck_.

"What was she talking about?"

Turned to find her watching him, naked worry in her eyes...worry for  _him_...not worry for their relationship, not worry about Suzuki, but worry about what he was  _feeling_ …

He reached out and took the pistol from her, holding her hand a second longer before shaking his head, unable to bring the words forward to tell her…

Couldn't tell her...didn't know how to tell her…

Wasn't going to be able to tell her anyways, his head snapping slightly to the left to look behind her at the origin of the loud sound of something smashing into the floor.

Shawn surged up from the couch to the sound of Chris's "you could have thrown literally any fucking thing besides your damn phone"...

The problem of Suzuki was temporarily forgotten about as he watched his mechanic charge down the stairs, heard the sound of the sliding glass door wrench open…

_What in the fuck…_

"Are you going to go after him or should I?"

"You're better at dealing with anger," Chris answered, still staring at the pile of phone debris.

_What the fuck else could go wrong tonight?_

He turned his attention back to Lizzie for a moment, stepping closer to take her face in his hands softly. " _Later_ , I'll explain  _later_."

Giving her a quick kiss, he headed towards the stairs immediately after.

* * *

He made it outside just as Shawn's shoe connected with the lawn chair next to the pool, sending it jerking forward.

"Hey, I don't know what the fuck is going on, but-"

" _Everything's fucked_ ," shouted with another kick at the chair to the left, followed by his body doing a full spin before zoning in on the wet bar on the other side of the sliding glass door.

 _Fuck no_.

"Go ahead, destroy my bar. I'll have a fun time picking out your coffin. Do you want bright pink, white...maybe I'll just cremate you and throw your ashes in a dumpster-"

" _Might as fucking well…_ "

This shut down, the abysmal feeling of someone giving up...he'd been there before multiple times... _the hotel_ , the prison, and before that...the  _Locker_ …

"Sit your spastic ass down in the chair that you just abused and talk."

He got a hateful glare for just a few seconds before Shawn seemed to deflate, and he wondered if the guy might just let himself fall into the pool.

" _Sit. Down."_

A muttered "don't know what the fuck's the point" was thrown at him, but Shawn listened. Thank fuck.

"Take a couple of deep breaths. We aren't going to get anywhere if you don't calm down."

"Fuck you."

" _Shawn_."

Another soft " _fuck_ ", a dropping of his shoulders, and then he heard a soft " _sorry_ ".

"No need to apologize. You think I've never snapped?"

"True-"

"But I need to know  _why_."

He could sense the hesitancy, the churning of something, of several somethings beneath the surface…

"It's just...I...I  _like_ it here...I-it seems like it is starting to fall apart... _again_ …"

_Again?_

"What are you talking about?"

Three minutes went by before he spoke again, and he let him be silent, let him think through what he wanted to say, how much he wanted to say, whether he wanted to say anything at all…

"My parents...I told you that they were dead...the first week we were here...I told you they died…"

"Yeah, I remember-"

" _But_ I never told you  _how_  they died…"

The hair stood up on the back of his neck, but he sat quietly anyway, waited patiently.

"When I was eight, I...it had been a Friday night...sometimes I got to stay up late on Friday nights to watch cartoons. The living room light had been burnt out and my dad hadn't been out to get a bulb yet.

"I couldn't see the buttons on the remote, so I lit a candle to turn the channel...don't know why I didn't just take the remote into the kitchen or the hallway, then I got too tired to keep watching, so I went upstairs to go to bed."

 _And forgot the candle_.

"I left the candle burning, and my dad had left the window next to the dinner table open...it was windy that night...I hadn't noticed the window...wind knocked the candle over while we slept…

"I woke up to smoke and a firefighter dragging me out of bed...I remember trying to say something about my parents, trying to point to their bedroom door, but it all happened so fast. They took me outside, put me in an ambulance…

"Next thing I remember is sitting in the hospital, hearing people talking outside about foster care, what they were going to do with me...didn't really understand it...what was going on...what had happened, until I caught a glimpse of the T.V. in the waiting room of that floor...there was a news story about the fire…"

The pool didn't have a single ripple in it, the air seemed unnaturally still... _quiet_ …

"I killed them, Jack. They're dead because of me...and here with you and Chris, I feel like I can move past it, I feel like I belong somewhere...I can't  _lose_  that…"

Finally, he understood, understood why Shawn always held himself apart from everything, always put up a front...didn't want to make the mistake of getting comfortable.

But all he could do was drop his head in his hand for the second time that night, the weight between them as palpable as a ton of water on top of them. " _Christ, Shawn…"_

"The counselor kept telling me it wasn't my fault...that it was an accident-"

"-Shawn-"

"-Kept telling me that I was only eight, that I couldn't blame myself for it-"

"- _Shawn_ -"

"-but I'd been smart enough to know better, my mother had told me a hundred times to blow out candles before going to bed-"

" _Shut up for a second."_

What in the hell could he tell him? That his counselors were right? That everything he was feeling was invalid?

_Fuck…_

"Look, I realize that the human brain is an absolute cunt sometimes, and that it can convince you of horrible things...twisted things...make you think they are  _normal..._ that they are right-"

"- _but-"_

" _-_ but you didn't kill your parents...for fuck's sake, you were eight,  _eight_. It  _was_  a simple mistake...a horrible unfortunate circumstance with horrible consequences, but you  _can't_  blame yourself."

"Well. I  _do-_ "

"Fuck that. You  _can't_. Your parents wouldn't blame you,  _they wouldn't._ Putting that kind of weight on a child...that's  _asinine_ , disgusting...you need to forgive yourself, because you sure as hell can't change what happened, and hating yourself over it isn't going to bring anything or anyone back. Playing the "if only" game will just eat away at you until there is nothing left to take...trust me, I've been there. A hundred times."

He could see the lingering self-hate in his eyes, the shadow of memory there twisting... _resisting…_

"Did you try to forget that candle? Did you wish for it to get knocked over? Did you go to bed hoping that it would start your house on fire?"

"What-"

"-Just answer the question."

A car in the distance made an unnecessary loud noise from its muffler, something rustled in the trees behind them, but he didn't notice and Shawn didn't notice.

" _No…_ "

"Then it's not your fault."

First, his eyes went to the concrete again, then up towards the sky, then to the left, before finally settling on just closing.

"I know-but it has to be someone's fault...I can't believe that life can just do that...can just ruin everything in the-"

"-It can. It will. When I was nine, my mother died. When I was 21, I was branded a pirate for freeing slaves, that same day they burned my ship into ash. Things happen. They don't always make sense, but they happen. You have to learn to live with that reality-"

"-but-"

"- _But_ , what you can't do, what you can't allow yourself to do, is live like you expect everything to fall apart. Do you know why I lost Elizabeth? Because that's how I lived, for way too long. Always expected her to get up and walk away, always expected to have the rug pulled out from under me...failed to see what was already obvious if I would have just paid enough attention, if I would have just stepped out of my own insecurities for one second...to see that she loves me.

"You have  _plenty_  to live for, plenty to enjoy, and you don't have to spend half your time waiting for the next tragedy. Devote that time to finding something to hang onto when you fall."

He got up, wanted to give the guy a second of space...went over to the bar and set two tumblers on the counter, poured some Jack Daniels in each, and went back to the table.

"Here. Enjoy actually having a reason to drink it for once."

At first, he thought he wasn't going to drink it...he looked at it, picked it up and swished the amber liquid around, and then finally tipped it back and downed it in one gulp.

"Thanks."

"Anytime," he replied, finishing his glass off. "Counselor Jack. I should get a nametag."

"Fuck you," but this time it was said with a small grin on his face.

"Listen, I realize that working with me is kind of like walking through a minefield with a blindfold on sometimes, but I like to think that I have something going on up here," he paused to point at his head, "and I swear that I would never deliberately put any of you, or  _this_ , the life we have, in danger."

"Well, that's a lie. You  _are_  the danger."

"Ha. To some people, maybe."

" _No,_ no, to me and Chris too."

"Fuck you," he shot back with another grin and a small salute. "We should get a set of those t-shirts that say "fuck you" with arrows pointing to the left and right...or would it be "fuck him"..."

"That reminds me, you and Chris should show Lizzie your perfect impersonation of the dude/sweet scene from-"

"-First of all, the only time we ever do that is when both of us are so smashed that we can't remember what tattoos we have ourselves, and second of all-"

"-it's fucking funny. Do it for her."

"Yeah...whatever, comedian Jack too, then."

* * *

He was grateful for the shot of JD as he climbed the stairs with half a mind to turn around and flee into the forest...he  _dreaded_  the conversation that...well,  _fuck_ , he couldn't avoid it...not now that it had been brought up...but he really hadn't prepared for it...to go into detail about...she knew things had happened…

The lights were on in the bedroom... _damn_ , he was almost hoping she had gone back to bed.

Open the door. Open the stupid door. She loves you…

A pair of red silk pajamas were strewn across the floor when he walked in, and  _she_  was sitting on his bed with the blanket wrapped around her, watching him with five different shades of trepidation.

He stopped in the middle of the floor, stared at the bed for a second... _no_...thought about taking a shower first... _can't delay_...then finally settled on crossing the room to the couch and dropping himself onto it like a sack of lead bricks.

"Love?"

Didn't turn to acknowledge her…

"I...didn't intend on it being brought up like that... _hell_ , I didn't really intend on it ever being brought up...truthfully I had half forgotten about it until she…"

"Forgotten about what?"

But he could tell that she already knew...somehow…

"Suzuki and I... _fuck_ , it was a long time ago...like ten years...we did...sort of did a job together...more like we met up halfway accidentally and finished it. It was...a bad week for me...pretty dark...and I just wanted...wanted to  _forget_...everything.

"I didn't tell you the specifics because I saw no reason to...it never meant anything... _that_ was impossible...but every time, even though you weren't even around...I  _still_  felt like I...like I was betraying you...made me uncomfortable afterward...laying there...the ill feeling always lasted for a few days…

"Her and I...we had a one night stand...that night once the job was finished...I didn't sleep that night...all I could think about was you...how I wished it was you with me...instead of her...the only thing that got me through the sex was thinking of you...it was the last time I touched anyone else…

"Couldn't bring myself to do it again...decided I would rather suffer and stay true to your memory instead of losing a bit of myself into the nothingness...stopped trying to escape and instead tried to stay stationary, at least in my head."

After that, he stayed quiet, covered his face with his hands, and waited.

What he was waiting for, he didn't know...didn't know what her reaction was going to be...thought he might be able to imagine what it  _might_  be...but didn't know what it was  _going_  to be.

So when he heard the comforter rustle, when he heard footsteps walking away from him, his heart clenched in fear…

_If I could take it back I would Lizzie...dammit…_

But then the footsteps were walking towards him, not away, and through the frantic pace of his heart, he realized that she was kneeling down in front of him, pulling his hands away from his face.

"Come on, let's go take a shower."

* * *

Her heart was breaking for his wary expression as he stepped in behind her, and then he wouldn't even look at her, just stood under the water and covered his face with his hands again.

"Hey-"

The retreat, the slight recoil when she wrapped her fingers around his wrists should have surprised her, but it didn't... _couldn't_ anymore.

" _Hey_ , what's wrong?"

"I just-" he paused to reach out and grab the bottle of Old Spice, "I just feel so...ashamed of it-"

"- _Jack_...you shouldn't. I never...I didn't  _own_  you, still don't own you...you were free to do whatever it was that you wanted."

He raised his eyes to look at her, searched her face.

"Don't...don't you feel uncomfortable with it? I...I don't-"

 _Yes_ , she was. The second she had figured out what the woman was talking about, she had felt  _ill_ , but  _not_  angry...could never feel angry towards him like that…

"Of course I do...it was one thing just knowing that things had happened, but...having her here, in front of me...and then knowing that the two of you shared that...it makes it  _real_...before I could just ignore it...but now I keep seeing images...flashes…

"I will never claim ownership over you...anytime you want to leave, you're free to do so...but I  _hate_  the idea of any other woman having you...touching you...kissing you...it makes me feel sick…"

"I didn't-didn't kiss anyone else. Couldn't bring myself to do it...never let them see my face either...that part of me...was yours...I'd only ever allowed you to see it…"

All she could feel in that moment was love, love for his love for her, love for him, love for what they had...and in love with the fact that she had it back, love for his touch...which was encompassing her wrist just then, raising her hand to his heart.

"You know who this belongs to...don't think I need to tell you any more...it never stopped belonging to you...not once in that 44 years...and had I kissed someone else...had I held them like I hold you when we make love...it...it would have felt like I was letting my heart belong to someone else...I couldn't do that."

She wanted to say something, to explain...to make more words...but her voice failed her...until she realized she needed to tell him too.

"I never kissed anyone either...I could barely do  _anything_  without just comparing whoever it was, the very few men that I had been with, to  _you_. Everything they did...it just never even came close to you...I think you ruined me for anyone else…"

"Well, good thing there won't be anyone else, hm? I...I know that we don't own each other...but I'm not saying no to forever either...can't imagine any other future…"

Her mouth quivered with emotion as she laid her forehead on his chest, trying to pull herself together, trying to put everything that had just happened in a neat little box...but it just  _wouldn't_  fit...too much feeling... _too much_...it had to  _go somewhere_.

"I need you," tumbled out of its own accord, and then he was backing her up against the shower wall, the hard strength of his body pressing against her, reassuring her of his presence, his hands were sliding up her stomach to cup her breasts while his mouth descended on her neck, his tongue proving to burn even hotter than the water dotting the wall behind them, slicking their skin...she caught glimpses of droplets on his bronze skin...rolling down his shoulder, tried to follow them until her eyes slipped shut when the gentle pressure of his fingers nudged her thighs apart...she drug her hands up to clutch his back, raising up on her toes in abandon when his fingers slid inside of her…

"I want to be the only man to touch this," he whispered in her ear, and all she could do was nod with a jerking motion…"The only one you think about...you're the only woman I think about... _God_ , I love you..."

His words melted her, made her clench around his tiny thrusts below...could never imagine another man...and  _two could play that game_ …

With a heavy breath against his neck, she reached down to wrap her hand around his now straining erection, and he leaned closer to her with a soft " _yes_ ", turning into a deep moan as she firmly stroked him…" _I want to be the only woman to touch this...to stroke you...to make you come...to make you climb to heights that you never want to fall from-"_

Her words were swallowed by his mouth as it crashed into hers, as hands curled around her arse to lift her up, pressing his hips flush against hers...she only broke away for a moment to whisper " _I need you inside"_ against his lips with ragged breath...he wasted no time complying, sliding his shaft along her slit, and then entering her with a hard stroke, not stopping to...didn't wait for anything...retreated only to slam back inside, one hand still gripping her hip, the other dug into her hair...her body was jerking, rubbing against the wet stone of the shower wall with each driving thrust he made, she was whimpering into his jaw, his neck, digging her fingernails into the skin of his back…

Didn't... _couldn't_  discern the difference between the raw emotion swirling inside of her and the maelstrom of heat and pleasure radiating out from her core...dimly wondered if there was a difference...whispered " _only yours_ " into his ear...then nearly shouted it as he found that spot within her that made the world start to fall away…"Oh,  _God_...love...love…"

Forgot words entirely, lost herself in his body moving against hers, under her hands, his moans in her ear, the perfection of him within her, thrusting, rubbing against her clit with each movement, his wet skin sliding against hers, oh  _god_...so close...so close...her legs tightened around his waist with the first tremor that rocked her, that lifted her hips flush against him...then another, ripping a cry from her lips...then he was moaning " _close_ " in her ear, and her core collapsed around him in a vice, the orgasm felt through every fiber of her body as though it was trying to chase away any lingering doubt, any lingering anything except for Jack and how fucking goddamn much she loved him…

Felt him coming too, his body tightening, his hips jerking hard, his arms wrapping around her just as he finally swore when he spilled himself inside of her, pinning her against the wall with the strength of his release, muscles quivering, almost like he was vibrating against her…

Somehow he still had enough strength to keep her wrapped around him...his body felt like it had lost it all, slack under her fingers...he was still inside of her, still breathing heavily,  _trembling_ …

" _Only yours_ " they were saying back and forth, though neither of them could fully form the words, just hoped their breath wrapped around the syllables enough for the other to translate…

And for just a moment, she wondered with time suspended around her, how she had managed to capture the heart of this man, this...perhaps ' _man'_  was too paltry of a word to describe him at this point...he nearly transcended simple language...words…

She was already smiling when he pulled back to gaze at her, a lazy grin spreading across his mouth too, the tension and anxiety washing away as easily as it had come, and as long as they had each other, it would always wash away that easily.

" _Hey_ ," she heard him say, felt his finger brush the side of her face, felt it trace her lips, then his entire hand was covering her cheek, his mouth suddenly on hers with a tender kiss, swallowing her word, a quiet returned  _hey_ , swallowing her words again, but she suspected that with each kiss, he was doing more than that, he was merging their souls just a little more…

"I seem to remember owing you some bathtub time."

"We just took a shower-"

"- _Not really_ , and even if we did, we do what we want, you and I."

A little giggle, a sigh, and another quick kiss. "The bathtub it is then. How many pirate stories do you suppose we can tell before we both fall asleep?"

"Well, with the lives we led, I reckon we could tell them all night."


	26. Preservation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 26! Sorry about the wait! I got sick, and then just felt like a zombie for a while. But I hope this one makes up for it. :) Remember, I love to hear your thoughts.

September 17th, Thursday Morning, 3 AM

* * *

When talking about the inherent necessity of things, things on Earth, no matter how minute or grandiose, everything has a central importance, much like the command center of a large aircraft, or the core of the Earth, the President of a country, a nation's military...within these systems comes a trickle down to all of the other moving parts...it could be argued that the collection of parts... _the gears_ , are just as crucial, without them the system couldn't function...like a battery trying to power nothing, it becomes useless, a dead weight.

What do these things mean to their surrounding whole? A President, they are seen as the one to turn to, the one is expected to be present at every major event, telecasted to the entire world, or the military, a silent presence that some either decry or support, created to defend the country to threats that its people are not even fully aware of...the core of the Earth, an entity that humanity hasn't even glimpsed yet...central power...take away the names and the language, and it turns out that the central power system turns up in far more places than could be mentioned.

Much like the Sun in space, or Earth to those that have not yet grasped the insignificance of the planet when compared to the expanse of the universe, everything in the world has a hierarchy of parts, a hierarchy that does bleed and overlap itself when examined a little closer.

Centralized in the human chest, protected by the ribcage and responsible for nearly all of the blood flow throughout the body, lies the heart, depicted as a cartoon drawing to most people, some of them even believing that it really looks like that…

...a part of the ignorance of humans, to take everything they see as truth without question…

It beats 100,000 times a day, carrying most of the responsibility of keeping a person alive...like flipping a light switch in a room, if the heart stops beating, its death, as quick as the immediate absence of light...the heart, for all its importance, is incredibly simple, only existing to…

And its presence in nature...almost every creature in the world possesses a heart, from frogs to dolphins, birds...she remembered one time that she had told Jack that the blue whale had the largest heart of any known living creature...his response being " _they also have the largest penis, which makes sense, the heart part too, since they are the biggest living creature in the world_ "...they had been in a museum...the British Museum, if she remembered correctly, walking through their ocean exhibit at the time...he had gotten a couple of strange looks from parents with small children...and her response hadn't been any better…" _you're jealous_ "...combated with " _are you suggesting that I'm not adequate"..."No, I'm just stating a plainly obvious fact...you're not a blue whale"..."Obviously. if I were to be a marine creature, I would be-"_

She and Jack really could turn anything into a sarcastic argument, sniping at each other back and forth...

…" _-if you're going to say a great white shark, I'm going to laugh at you-"_

…" _-I was going to say a killer whale...I seem all cuddly and cute until I want to kill something…"_

…" _Great white sharks are cute…"_

…" _I doubt you would say the same thing when it's tearing your arm off…"_

…" _And what marine creature would I be?"_

…" _Oh, that's easy…"_

Cue her pointed look and hand on hip.

…" _You're a jellyfish."_

…" _A...jellyfish?"_

…" _Yeah, you're pretty and elegant from a distance, but as soon as someone pisses you off, you sting the ever-loving fuck out of them…"_

…" _Ah, I see the connection now. So, we have cute and cuddly, and pretty and elegant, but we turn into killing machines…"_

Coincidentally, the jellyfish doesn't possess a heart. But she did.

...And someone else owned it.

Often, she wondered about the early stages of humanity, and how they thought about the insides of their bodies. What did they suppose the strange thumping thing in their chest was? Did they know what it did?

The idea of ignorance of the internal systems within her seemed strange, and she was finding it hard to fathom not knowing what a  _heartbeat_  was. Though, she wagered that they had figured out that the  _lack_  of a beating heart meant death, never mind whether they knew the reason or context.

That was an interesting relationship... _death_  and the human heart. Next to the brain, it was the most important organ in the body, and it was also responsible for the most fatalities. Heart disease, heart attacks, heart failure...it had quite a bad reputation.

Quite strange, since the  _other_  famous relationship it had was with the one thing humans truly had to live for and strive for... _love_. The heart alone had the power to kill you and give you a reason to live.

How  _cruel_.

Then again,  _love_  killed people too. It wasn't innocent in the world. In fact, such a thing had a name... _broken heart syndrome_. Normally she would be skeptical if she hadn't been quite convinced many times in her life that she was in danger of being claimed by it.

...The heartbeat, a constant reminder of a person's vitality...capable of so many different things…

She swore nostalgia took place within the heart...there was a distinct feeling of swelling in her chest when she looked at pictures of ships...when she stood on a pier overlooking the ocean, her heart throbbed with so many things...longing, remembrance, the smell of the water, the crispness of the air...one time her and Jack had been on a pier in Florida... _Naples_ , if she remembered correctly...looking at the sunset…

" _Not quite as pretty as it was from the Pearl,"_ she had said, a wistful heaviness in her voice...Jack, who had been standing at the opposite corner…" _It'll do, love,"_  with a head tilt and a soft smile in her direction.

" _You know, it's been-"_ she had paused to do quick math in her head, " _163 years since we lost her, and I can still remember every sail, every plank of wood...your bed...she'll always be with us, I think."_

She hadn't gotten a response, not that she had expected it, but she had seen an expression come over his face, one of sadness, remembrance of his own…

" _It's times like these that I wish I was better with a camera…"_

" _You're fine with a camera, love, you just hate lugging them around…"_

" _Maybe one day they will have smaller ones...pocket sized ones…"_

" _They will have a lot of things one day, and a lot of things will go away…"_

She had turned to look at him, seeing him still half-focused on the water…

" _Not me, I'll never go away...I'm like your bad penny...I always turn up somewhere eventually."_

That had gotten a little smile out of him, but he hadn't said anything about her slip of ' _your'_.

" _You think you're unpleasant and unwanted?"_

" _...I can be a little snippy sometimes...I tend to distract you…"_

" _Well, you're not wrong there, darling-"_

And just at that moment, a dolphin had breached the water in front of her, sending a spray of water into her face and squeal of shock and delight shooting out of her mouth. Her heart rate had skyrocketed, both from the dolphin and Jack's sudden laughter. There had been a set of stairs down to a section of the pier without the railing.

" _Maybe I can get it to surface again…"_

" _Just hope that you don't get a mermaid instead…"_

And she had gotten it to surface again, its smooth form slicing through the water until just its head popped out to regard her with curiosity.

" _They're such beautiful creatures,"_  she had said, reaching her hand out to stroke its snout, earning her a delighted bobbing.

" _So are you,"_ a warm voice had said in her ear, sending her heart climbing again. " _And the dolphin seems to like you, so you can't be all that bad."_ It had made a little noise at her, and she had sworn it was  _smiling_.

" _I wish I had something to feed it…"_

" _Don't worry, it's not going to starve because you don't carry fish around with you."_

Having him that close to her, hovering just a hair's breadth away, with or without the obstacle of clothing, had always sent her heart into a maddening tizzy, stopping for a moment like it itself wasn't prepared for the increase, for the racing,  _pounding_  it was about to embark on, then slamming away against her ribcage with nothing in the world available to slow it down, even when he had moved away to continue staring at the ocean, or when he had always sauntered away from her form where he had been leaning against her as she stood at the  _Pearl's_  railing...

Of course, if anyone had the idea to question her on her reactions, she would argue that it was just the sudden appearance of the dolphin,  _certainly_  not Jack.

The heart  _was_  the perpetrator of betrayal for a person, the only perpetrator that they couldn't control, couldn't defend against.  _Desire_ , that strange pull in the pit of the stomach at the sight of another person, a teacup warmth starting there and spreading from the look in their eyes, from the sight of their hair, the way their lips fit together, the movements of their hands...desire accelerated the heartbeat, made the pupils dilate, made the pulse quicken...narrowed the senses until the brain's ability to form and push forth speech was compromised...the grip a person has on logic, reason, inhibition...they all fly away like a frightened flock of birds…

That all-encompassing emotion wasn't the only thing the heart could signal...like many other dichotomies involved with it, it could also give away the damning presence of  _fear_ , of anxiety...but rather than the heart making  _desire_  possess the body... _fear_  possesses the heart as surely as the transformation of a werewolf over a human, making it erratic, uneven, sending chills throughout a person's limbs,  _skin_ …

...the fight or flight response...escape or challenge, run or kill...in the life of a pirate the feeling became second nature...fear turns into excitement eventually...the thrill of the battle, that focus, that  _drive_  to win, to come out on top, to prove yourself more skilled than the person at the other end of the blade being slashed and stuck at you…

She had come to love that life, always balanced on the edge of danger and freedom, knowing that everything could be snatched away without a single thought of her...yet knowing that she would do everything in her power to prevent that from happening...that she possessed  _the skill_  to do so.

One evening in the  _Cove_ , a few months after the  _Pearl_  had gone down, she had been nearly frothing at the mouth with excitement... _finally_  having something to chase away that haunted look in his eyes... _and the haunting in her own heart_...at least something  _more_  than her body and company…

It hadn't even occurred to her to have a painting made of her and Jack, despite living around portraits her entire life...but when the idea had come to her quite suddenly...she had been walking through the  _Cove_ , and could have sworn she smelled fresh paint...the sprint to the local... _decorator_ of sorts, at least the man responsible for all the crooked paintings and hodgepodge of  _things_  that littered tables and desks…had been very immediate.

* * *

_It was quite a sight, she supposed, being nose deep in a crate of God-knows-what only to nearly crick your neck from turning it too quickly at the sound of the door slamming open just to reveal the out of breath and frazzled Pirate King standing there, eyes wild and hair everywhere._

_Her hat had come off somewhere between the other end of the Cove and here, but she hadn't been of a mind to turn back the other way to retrieve it. She could just steal Jack's anyway._

_Her sudden appearance would have perhaps frightened any other man just a little, but the one in front of her only looked back and forth between her and the street behind her with a barely patient gaze...even though his eyebrow wasn't arched, it might as well be with the way he was…_

" _Good afternoon, Josiah," she said smoothly as she stepped further into the small dusty shop, "and before I go any further, perhaps you should at least act pleased to see me."_

_A grunt was all she got before he stood up, the crate forgotten. "Every time you come in here, all I get are demands for things that are more trouble than...well...than what they're worth anyway."_

" _Aye, but if you wouldn't market yourself as a purveyor of all things normally unattainable and_ very _attractive, I wouldn't need to come to you, and therefore I would have no use for you."_

" _Last time I acquired something for you, I nearly-"_

" _-Yes, yes, the snake, you've told me a hundred times. Not that I'm going to apologize for it since it was-"_

" _-My choice to agree to the gallivanting off, I know."_

_He stood there in a straight column of indecisiveness, his graying hair mixing with the stubborn brown, still glaring at her, while she glared right back with her arms crossed over her chest, challenged him to even try and throw her out. When his shoulders dropped a fraction, she knew she had him._

" _Out of curiosity, why can't you just have your favorite Captain go on these grand quests for you? God knows he would…"_

_That coaxed a smile out of her. "Jack is far too busy finding his own treasure to indulge in my hair-brained cravings for treasure and knickknacks. And he isn't mine."_

" _Didn't say he was. Well, what is it that you need this time? An ancient cursed dagger? A scroll of magic? A key to a sunken chest with a thousand gems inside-"_

" _You are making me out to be a greedy woman, you ridiculous grumpy old man. Maybe try indulging in a little rum like Jack. It might liven you up a little."_

" _Because livening up is exactly what I need."_

" _Well, Jack refers to you as the 'town hermit', and hermits hardly ever enjoy their lives…"_

" _Does he? Should I tell you what I refer to him as?"_

_Then he suddenly held his hand out in a regretful manner. "No, wait, don't. I don't need him coming down here annoyed with me. Last time he did that-"_

" _-he broke a few things just to watch you complain. I heard."_

" _...Are you ever going to tell me what it is that-"_

" _-I need you to find me a person."_

_His eyes widened like he had just heard something obscene come out of her mouth._

" _Now, Elizabeth, I know I complain, but really...we've graduated to kidnapping now?"_

_She laughed brightly, smiling at him. "Oh, of course not. You are going to convince them to make something for me."_

" _Make something for you?" he deadpanned._

" _Yes. I was walking," she started to walk around the shop as well as she spoke, "around town, when I swear I smelled fresh paint coming from somewhere...and then it occurred to me that ever since I was elected, there hasn't been a single painting made of me...or Jack, come to think of it. I would like one painted."_

" _...you want me to locate a painter?"_

" _Oui, Josiah-"_

" _Oh, don't try and butter me up by speaking French. But you're lucky, because I already have someone in mind, and what do you know, he's French as well."_

" _Never too many Frenchman around. Though, Capitaine Chevalle is a big enough character as it is. Is your painter already here?"_

" _On his way, actually. I called him here to look at something for me. With a little gentle persuasion, I'm sure he would agree to paint you a portrait."_

" _Good, send him my way when he arrives."_

" _Yes, your Kingly excellence."_

" _I bet if you said that to Jack more often, he wouldn't be so hell-bent to irritate the living shit out of you."_

" _Do you really believe that?"_

" _Maybe, maybe not, but he does get this little twinkle in his eyes whenever anyone refers to him as a King."_

_She stepped out of the shop with a near bounce, eager to meet the man that would bring her and her pirate to life with ink and canvas._

* * *

Like every freedom given to her, the warmth of rum down her throat, the earthy smell of the  _Pearl's_  wood, the lack of corsets, there was only one privilege that she would give up everything to keep...the  _heart_  of the man she loved...and she hadn't even known then that she held it within her. The door he had given her into his world had been enough to swear herself, her sword, and her heart to him, and she would have cut down anyone in her path to preserve it.

The entirety of the two days before she met the mysterious artist, every  _second_...every  _minute_ , she had even dreamt about the moment that she would reveal the painting to Jack, in the hope of seeing a fraction of life returned to his eyes, a little light put back in those bottomless black windows...because the light of the  _Cove_ , the company of all that were there, her duties,  _none_  of it had been enough to make up for Jack being too much in the dark to truly share it with her.

Josiah, in all his charismatic persuasiveness, had successfully managed to convince the artist to meet with her.

The challenge had been convincing him to  _paint_.

 _And keeping it a secret from Jack_ , whom she had wanted to surprise, which had really been more of a challenge than it had needed to be.

Secrets to Jack were like shiny things to a niffler...he sniffed them out before there was even a secret in the process of being kept. Jack was  _pre-secret_.

Thankfully she was good at keeping them. Most of the time.

* * *

_Every time she caught Jack moving out of the corner of her eye, she had to turn her head in the opposite direction. The corner of her mouth kept twitching up like it was attached to a puppet string, threatening to break into a full-blown maniacal smile._

_She was good at keeping secrets, good at appearing innocent…_

_...but she had also never prepared a surprise for Jack, and it had her feeling like a hive of bees had invaded her body, buzzing everywhere, making her twitch and tap her foot to the point where even Jack had given her a sidelong glance with a raised eyebrow, then retreated again at her shoulder shrug and valiant attempt to act like nothing was amiss, despite her heart being practically audible._

_Now he was sitting at her desk and she was sitting at her chair in the corner pretending to read a book while he was most certainly pretending to act like he wasn't methodically dismantling every second of her behavior for the last six hours._

" _...Not to poke my face in, but you've read the same paragraph six times."_

_Oh, really? She hadn't noticed. She thought the entire book was about how Robinson and his crewmates were afraid of the sea storm._

" _And you've pretended to draw on that map eight times."_

_She might have caught him making one line. Irrelevant._

" _Aye, because I've been too distracted by trying to figure out what is going on in that head of yours to actually do anything."_

" _There's nothing going on in my head."_

_A heavy sigh, some finger tapping, and then the map was officially and entirely abandoned._

" _Darling, you probably have eleven battle plans, the arguments you're going to have and win a week out from now, the ways in which you are going to drive me mad a month out from now, seven new ways to bother the hermit, and a hundred other things going on in there."_

" _I drive you mad?"_

_Her quick glance up to his eyes had her catching a glimmer of amusement in them._

" _Absolutely almost around the bend because of you."_

" _...No, I think you've already made the journey several times complete with decimating a few thousand bottles of rum and enough treachery and lawlessness for all the men and women in the Cove."_

_She had moved onto the next paragraph as she said it, determined to make it through entire page out of spite, and then-_

" _I've never done anything treacherous, and the law is of the utmost importance-"_

" _Oh, if you've never broken the law then I've never been marooned on an island."_

" _Maybe it was all a dream."_

" _Rather vivid then, if you ask me...with the burning rum and angry pirate pointing a pistol at me…"_

_A wild connection to a memory had words bubbling up again, and she rose out the chair to assume a performer's stance, pretending like she was holding a scroll in her hand and deepening her voice to a condescending self-righteous tone._

" _Jack Sparrow, be it known that you have been charged, tried, and convicted-"_

_The sound of his recognition was a tangible thing, like his disbelief and admiration of her humor had coupled with the air...as tangible as the annoyed smirk now adorning his face._

" _-For your willful commission of crimes against the crown…said crimes being numerous in quantity and sinister in nature-"_

" _That's debatable."_

_She paused, lowering the imaginary scroll for a moment to peer at him. "Which part? Don't tell me that you have suddenly lost the ability to count."_

" _I have been counting the seconds that it's taking for you tell me this big grand secret...ah, and I meant sinister...never mind it being an overly theatrical word...whether they were sinister or not depends on who you talk to."_

" _I see," was all she said, raising the scroll again, and making a show of clearing her throat. "The most aggrieves of which to be cited herewith...Piracy-"_

" _-Obviously-" came the whisper under his breath._

" _-Smuggling...impersonating a person of the Spanish Royal Navy-"_

" _-not entirely sure why the Crown cared-"_

_Again, she looked up from her scroll. "Probably because they were afraid of you impersonating a member of their Navy."_

" _And wear that uniform again? I'd rather drown."_

" _Impersonating a cleric of the Church of England...sailing under false colors...arson-"_

" _We were just talking about that...what was it again...oh, burning rum...but I can't seem to remember who the perpetrator was…"_

" _I never said-"_

" _Oh! Right, that was you."_

_He only shut up because of her threatening glare, and even then, she could tell that there were a hundred sarcastic things still running around just behind his lips._

" _Kidnapping, looting, poaching, pilfering, depravity, degradation, and general lawlessness-"_

" _I find that last bit to be a little redundant."_

_Her voice got more dramatic, and he started finger tapping on the desk again._

" _And for these crimes, you have been sentenced on this day to be hung by the neck until dead."_

" _May God have mercy on your soul," he finished for her, rising from the chair and plucking the imaginary scroll from her hands, making his own show of rolling it up and throwing it over her shoulder. "Even if I did break a few laws, apparently a certain Governor's daughter saw fit to save me anyway. What does that say about her?"_

 _That she had never been fit for that life, that she had been far too attracted to the man about to be executed rather than the man who had just told her he loved her...really, what_ did _that say about her?"_

_His arms slid around her neck and his head bent to press a few soft kisses next to her ear. "I never said I was the beacon of purity, Jack...and maybe it only suggests that a certain pirate was worth saving?"_

_He didn't say anything, only smiled against her hair...didn't say anything for a few seconds, at least. The presence of him there, the warmth of his body...he could suddenly become permanently mute and just holding him in her arms would still be enough anyway._

" _Only a thousand bottles?" he whispered on the edge of another kiss on her hair._

_Only a thousand-oh. No, don't smirk at him...could laugh a little, he deserved that for that remark. "Only you would argue in favor of more."_

" _Mmm, misinformation is rather harmful, don't you think?"_

" _So is being a drunk pirate."_

_He pulled back with a wounded look on his face, his bottom lip pushed out comically. "'M not always drunk."_

_She wanted to argue that, really did want to argue that, but then...he hadn't been drunk when he first made love to her...he didn't drink for the three weeks prior to that…_

_Another smile curled across his mouth when he spotted her reluctance to fire back. "At least, not when it counts," he added. "Also, might I point out that I'm impressed that you remembered that entire speech. Thought about that day a lot?"_

_Yes._

" _You didn't?"_

" _I don't like to dwell on times I almost died, as a rule."_

_Play it off...play it off like a joke…_

" _I...might've thought about it...I hadn't been present for a hanging before, and-" but then she caught that pointed stare, almost like he was deconstructing her words as they came out of her mouth. Sighing, she fidgeted with her hands, playing with her fingernails._

" _I suppose there is no point in keeping it a secret...I used to...well, after you escaped...I dreamt about it...nightmares of Will not getting there in time...watching you drop. I was always forced to stand there and listen to that speech...knowing that there was nothing I could do...no plan I could make…"_

_And then she stopped, unwilling to continue down that line of thought...even as he stepped closer again and took her hands in his own, threading his fingers through hers...his face was one of confusion, like he couldn't decide how he should respond, the humor bleeding away like it had never been there._

_In the end, he settled on a quiet "why"._

_Because even then she had felt like something was tearing, breaking when she had watched him stand there with the noose around his neck. Even then, she had felt like she was on the wrong side of the situation...like she should be standing there with him rather than watching him._

" _Because you didn't deserve it...the injustice of it…"_

_His eyes were fixed on something behind her, simultaneously focused and empty...focused on what was inside of his head...she could tell when he went far away like that…when he retreated._

" _I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable…"_

_She waited for a minute, then two, knowing he wasn't going to let her in any further at that moment, knowing he was going to turn the situation light again-_

" _Trifles. Was that the only thing that kept you up at night regarding me?"_

_Even behind the suggestive sparkle, she could see the lingering confusion, the conflict...but just like that, it was as though they had never trodden down that dark path, gone with the snap of a finger…_

" _Maybe, maybe not," she responded with a small grin. "Just so you're aware, I know full well that you have been trying to figure out what my secret is this entire time, and I'm still not going to tell you."_

" _Not even a hint?"_

" _No, because you take hints and figure out the next calendar year of events, the planetary alignment, the outcome of nine battles, the amount of treasure you are going to acquire, my counter-arguments to all of your arguments, and anything else that any normal person wouldn't know yet."_

" _Just a little hint," he whined, pressing his thumb and pointer finger together to demonstrate the 'little'._

' _Nope, not a chance' had almost climbed out of her mouth equipped with swords and pistols, but then one look at the pleading in his eyes, at the absolute ridiculous expression on his face, and a whooshing "fine" was coming out of her mouth instead, complete with a very dramatic eye roll. "I'm meeting someone."_

_Apparently, that wasn't the response he had been expecting._

" _...Meeting someone?"_

" _Aye, a Frenchman. He's...making something for me."_

_Where on earth he found suspicion in that, she couldn't fathom, and she let her distaste come in the form of her arms crossed over her chest. His arms did the same thing. "So, you're telling me that a Frenchman has had you on the brink of mania for the entire night...did he figure out how to make diamonds appear out of thin air?"_

_Insufferable man._

" _Maybe he did. Maybe he can procure maps that lead straight to treasure, maybe he can procure gold from his fingertips, or maybe he's-"_

" _-I could eavesdrop."_

_She fixed him with a Pirate King's glare. "If I even get a glimpse of a bead on your head while I'm with him, the only thing you're going to be eavesdropping on is your own funeral."_

" _Wouldn't that be a neat trick." At first, she thought he was letting the issue drop when he walked back towards her desk, but then he turned very slowly with a very aggravating smirk on his face. "I would certainly hate to ruin my own surprise anyway."_

_The words "excuse me" only exited out of her mouth out of pure shock, built entirely of breath and a loud gasp._

" _Oh, come now, darling, the only reason you would be fighting so hard to keep it a secret is that you are having him make me a gift. You would tell me otherwise. You tell me everything."_

_She wanted to be mad at him, she really did, but her affection for his intelligence trounced any anger that she may have felt, chasing it away like a lion might chase away a pack of frenzied vultures._

" _And you'd best appreciate the privilege of knowing my secrets, Jack Sparrow-"_

" _-Captain-"_

" _-and yes, he is making something for you, you damnable man-"_

" _-that almost sounds like a compliment."_

" _Because you're so self-absorbed that even insults are compliments to you."_

" _Well, when whatever insult you throw at me is accompanied by a smile and a kiss, a man can get a certain impression from them."_

_His statement was proven right when she reached him and pressed a soft kiss to his lips, whispering "pirate" at him, but whether that was an insult or not…it seemed to take on a different meaning every time either one of them said it._

" _Don't you forget it, love. Go on, meet your Frenchman then, while I sit here and suffer in my ignorance."_

" _I'll make it up to you," she said over her shoulder as she opened the door and slipped out._

* * *

_The private meeting chamber of the King was a small strangely angled room, with the light failing to reach the right side entirely, and only dimly illuminating the rest. She had promptly requested the placement of two lanterns, one on each side, so that she may see the person she was speaking with properly._

_Last time she had been in here, it had been to discuss the punishment for Captain Teague with Mistress Ching. The woman had wanted to congratulate her on her course of action regarding the former Code Keeper._

" _I applaud your decision regarding the severity of his crimes...and I fully support his immediate removal from the Brethren," she had said, keeping her actual knowledge of his crimes to herself. She apparently knew enough to believe his excommunication to be just and fair, which made her wonder how the woman had come to know about Jack and Teague's...relationship._

 _In fact, all the occasions that she had used this room, it always involved others stating their opinion on her plans and decisions. Only once did she have someone oppose her, and_ that _argument had made it out of the room and into the Grand Hall, straight into the earshot of Jack, who had stood in the background silently expressing his amusement at her shouting at poor Jocard, with nods of his head in agreement, looks of faux shock when she made a particularly inflammatory statement, and then immediate "I'm staying out of it" gestures when she caught him._

_The first and only time since that she had ever seen Jack raise his voice in anger was in the meeting hall, only two days after Will had left. She had been leaning over the table perusing the Code book when the main door had flown open, an irate Teague coming through with an equally irate Jack._

_She could pinpoint the exact spot on the floor that they had been standing when they finally stopped, their boots only about two feet apart. All she had been able to gather was that Teague had a problem with her election, and Jack had been defending her._

_The last thing he had said to Jack before he had disappeared into the shadows of the rooms beyond the meeting hall was a hissed "not a word to her"._

_It had taken another week for her to make the connection...the information she wasn't supposed to know...Teague had been a month too late with his warning._

_His ignorance of the actual depth of her and Jack's connection was his mistake, and his inability to control the flow of secrets. She had overheard Gibbs talking with Barbossa, of all people...hadn't meant to overhear, really...but she hadn't told anyone, would never dare tell anyone…_

_And now she was about to meet a man that was going to paint for her a portrait of Jack and herself...it was more than a portrait...it was an immortalization of them in this place, their image as Kings made permanent on canvas, so that even if they gave up this life tomorrow, the two of them would still be staring down on whoever would dare forget that they ruled here, and the eyes that stared back at them would be filled with wonder and fascination._

_Had she spread the secret she had accidentally learned...there would be no painting, Jack wouldn't have lifted a finger to defend her, and she might not even be in Shipwreck Cove...whether she meant that as her mind floating in a different world while she still lingered in the physical place, or whether she would slip away in the night to find a different life...that was still unclear._

_What was not unclear was the absolute smarminess that she could feel without even entering the room; the air felt slippery, infested with the stench of looming manipulation, not that she was a stranger to that, and it filled her with just a bit of unease. It gave her the distinct impression that painting was not this man's only activity, and not only that, but it was so far down on the totem pole of activities that he engaged in, it was a wonder that he could realistically be called a painter at all._

_Trying very hard not to narrow her eyes at the figure sitting in the opposite chair, a feat that was very impressive considering that his eyes were narrowed at her, black slits in a smooth angular face with a straight nose and thin lips...if it wasn't for the fact that he stood immediately to greet her with an outstretched hand, she would have been under the impression that he was trying to deconstruct her._

_Perhaps he still was._

" _Bonjour, your excellence," he said in a voice that sounded like it might come from a snake's mouth, smiling with a little too much satisfaction when she grasped his hand to shake it, returning a tight "Bonjour" at him._

" _Though, calling you 'your Excellence' might be a little...vide et creux...ah, how you say in English...hollow?"_

_The distinct impression that this was not a very nice man cemented itself just then, but she was equally as intrigued as she was affronted. "The exact translation of that is 'empty and hollow'," and at his arched eyebrow, she had to add a fraction of smugness, "I speak some French."_

" _Indeed. Then you must understand why I feel that way, what with some of the most famous monarchs in history being Frenchman...Henry the II, King of England, Louis of France-"_

" _Forgive my interruption, but by my recollection," she swept her arm in an arc across the room, "none of these men are here with us now. They're dead, I'm alive, and by the end of this conversation, I will see to it that you no longer find my title...distasteful."_

" _J'attends cela avec impatience…"_

_Looking forward to it, indeed. He searched her face, and she knew he was waiting for her name, just as she knew that this was going to be a hard man to win over._

" _Elizabeth Swann."_

" _Elizabeth, a Queen's name...but I did not miss that you never asked for mine-"_

" _-At this juncture I don't find your name important."_

_He leaned back in his chair as though he was pleased with the conversation so far._

" _Josiah told me that you would be a femme intelligente," he said, watching her movement as she sat in the chair across from him. "Valentin, au fait. Valentin Gravois, at your service."_

_A muscle in her jaw twitched from the effort of holding back a sneer at his grand gesture of his own person, the hands that he had used to make it now steepled in front of him on the table. "So, I was told that you need a painting."_

" _Oui, a portrait," and she said it in such a way to give the man no doubt that she would get it, and that's all he would be providing to her._

" _You have been unimpressed with my presentation of myself ever since you stepped into the room, yet you indulge in a portrait of yourself. How very interesting."_

" _I tend to dislike arrogance, but you misunderstand my motivations. This portrait is not an exercise in narcissism, but a gift to ease a little misery."_

" _Your misery? Forgive me, but that seems to be even more narcissistic than before...lifting your mood by staring at your own face."_

" _And forgive me for this, but an hour walk through the streets of Paris will give a person all of the narcissism they can handle."_

_She enjoyed this, enjoyed chewing on a man until he was left with nothing, but this man was proving to be a delightful challenge._

" _An accurate assessment. Have you been?"_

" _To Paris? No, but I've heard enough stories."_

" _It's lovely at night. I'm not sure I have encountered anything quite like it in my travels."_

" _Shipwreck Cove has its own beauty."_

_It was true, the city held a kind of sentience...almost like all the lanterns strewn everywhere were little golden eyes keeping a watchful presence over the people, a silent guardian. Sometimes she swore the ships spoke to her, creaking and shifting in the wind as though to tell her that they were pleased to see her walking about. And Jack was the only person who knew about the few ghosts she had seen wandering through the hulls and lounging in the few still intact crow's nests._

_He was the only person who would probably truly believe her, having had a few experiences himself._

" _I've noticed, you seem quite proud. So, tell me, who else is going to be in this portrait?"_

_Perhaps she should ask him how he knew that, and perhaps she should be even more suspicious of him because he knew…_

" _I hope it is my overt giving nature and compassionate attitude that gave it away."_

" _Compassion from a Pirate King? Perhaps a little oxymoronic...indeed, you have little to no interest in yourself as far as this portrait is concerned...so this tells me that the gift is the other half of the painting."_

" _I'll ask that you keep your assumptions about my nature to yourself since you have only known me for twenty minutes."_

_He traced his finger around the table, following the veins in the wood. "I did not say that you lack good qualities. You obviously care very much about this other person. You invited a stranger into your city, sat with him alone, despite your suspicion, and you are doing all of this for their sake. Very selfless."_

" _Pirates, you'll find, are more commonly compassionate than perhaps a nobleman. We've seen life, we've seen death, and we have seen things that can make a man wish for death. But the secret to having the kind of freedom we have? You have a true reason to live. What do noblemen have to live for? A life of rules, of choices made for them by society and those who believe themselves to be more important than them? We make our own choices."_

_The look on his face was one of surprise, pleasant surprise, as though he had been waiting for her to show a winning hand then entire time. "Remind me to congratulate Josiah on being so thoroughly right, will you?"_

_She allowed a little smile then, understanding that she had reached a point with him, a point where there was to be no more scraping off each other's surfaces._

" _In all of your prying and preening, you have failed to pick up on the fact that there are two Kings here. Then again, you find our titles to be worth less than your precious monarchs anyway."_

_That intrigued him, made obvious when he leaned forward and braced his left elbow on the table and tapped on his chin with his finger. "Deux? The mystery grows. Peut-être un nom?"_

" _Being that I like this banter of ours, as it is rare that I get a verbal sparring partner outside the usual, I want you to figure out who he is yourself."_

_He made a show of looking around the room using only his eyes...like a silent observer in a crowd of a thousand, examining each face for their stories, for what may be behind them...except the crowd was in his mind, she knew, and the faces were everything he was currently using to meet her challenge._

" _Défi accepté...in fact, challenges are always welcome. Being a painter, I doubt I could thrive if they weren't. So, you've already given me one clue in 'he'. Might I assume that I have heard of this person before?"_

_If Jack were here…_

" _I certainly hope so. He is...how do you say it in French...ah, très célèbre."_

" _Somehow, I think notorious might have a better application here, being that we are talking about pirates."_

_When she had read about Jack in the books she had snuck from the library into her room, notorious had been the word thrown around a lot...other words like infamous, knave, traitor against the Crown...there were others, she was sure, but those words had become pale, scattered around the floor like they had been a coating of dust on a painting, and once other words came in to take their place in her mind...though she had always been wary of the originals...the light, the truth on the bare canvas of piracy had shown her only freedom._

" _And what word shall we use to describe you? Since we are now talking about a painter, though I am unsure if that's all you are."_

_He tapped his pointer finger, middle finger, and ring finger in an even sequence against the table, and then reversed. "I take a certain fantaisie to legendary."_

" _Legendary? Mmm, who's the narcissist now?"_

" _Ah ha, drôle et intelligent, though something tells me that you don't exactly...present yourself to any men that could enjoy those traits."_

_No, not any man...just one._

" _Romantic ventures are distracting when one has a city to rule."_

" _But the relationship between a King and...well, King in this case...surely there is something there to explore, especially seeing as how you are both rather proud of him, and you are willing to go to all the trouble to give him a gift this special."_

" _Proud?"_

" _This game of yours, this isn't just because you enjoy verbal battles...it's because you believe him worthy of such a game, and you believe him to be worth my trouble of figuring your game out."_

" _Which you still haven't done. Are you in need of another clue?"_

" _Impatient, sommes-nous? Well, your Excellence, why don't we use you as evidence...a woman as strong as you wouldn't just choose anyone as their co-ruler...it would need to be someone with similar traits...you don't seem to play well with differences, at least not in those romantic ventures…_

" _Someone with experience, clearly...a Captain perhaps? And correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the Pirate King chosen from the living Pirate Lords?"_

" _I was elected when I occupied Sao Feng's previous Lordship."_

" _I see, very impressive. Now, since you mentioned that you were having this portrait done to ease a little misery...which current Pirate Lord could possibly be experiencing misery at this moment? One that has just lost his precious ship, no doubt, and by my account, La Perle Noire went down just outside of this city, attacked by the Royal Navy."_

_She didn't say anything, as she could only sit there in mild shock at the man's sudden breadth of knowledge._

" _I have one of two guesses. Captain Barbossa...but even after only knowing you for twenty minutes, I would be willing to bet my painting skill on your absolute intolerance for him. He wasn't the rightful Captain of the Pearl anyway. And if it was Barbossa, I'm afraid I would have to decline your portrait petition. No matter how...prospective you might be, no part of him will travel out of my paintbrush."_

" _That leaves the only other...and leaves me with no wonder as to why it is that he will be by your side in this portrait. Captain Sparrow gives a man a reason to appreciate immortalizing a person on canvas."_

_Smiling at his obvious appraisal of Jack, she nodded her head in confirmation. "Indeed, he's led quite the life."_

" _A life that led him to you."_

_At her quizzical expression, he made a noise and leaned back in his chair again. "Sparrow wouldn't just let anyone be his Queen...King, excuse me, I keep forgetting. Que je suis bête. I daresay he would like to pursue a romantic venture just as much as you do."_

" _Then I fear you don't know Jack as well as I do."_

" _Or perhaps you know him better than you want to believe?"_

_Ignoring that line of questioning, and knowing that he noticed, she realized something._

" _You were planning on agreeing to the portrait the entire time, weren't you?"_

" _Ah, no, not quite. I had already agreed before you had even walked into the room. It's not every day that a man gets to avoid painting white wigs and stuffy costumes."_

_She laughed at that._

" _Jack hates the Navy uniforms as well."_

_Rising from the chair, she eyed Gravois, searching for any lingering reason to suspect ulterior motives._

" _So, going forward, what are the preparations?"_

" _Well, I will need to get a sketch of your profile, and your face, along with his. Though since this is a surprise, I suspect I will need his in secret. Another challenge, but not a problem, not a problem. Then I will begin painting, and I'll send word when it is finished."_

" _Je vous remercie," she said, heading towards the door. "I enjoyed speaking with you. Oh, by the way," she paused to turn back to him, "Those famous monarchs of yours...I don't believe there was any romance with their respective spouses...in fact, I believe several Queens have murdered their Kings...or is it the other way around?"_

_His snake-like smile was all she needed to see herself out of the room, her task accomplished._

* * *

_What was a painting, really?_

_A collection of pigments splashed and mixed together to form something the eye can take in, interpret, and add to the swirling vortex of thought ether inside the mind...a series of brush strokes built into something tangible…_

_In some ways, a painting is the culmination of an artist's labor...a journey that the viewer takes, almost back in time...seeing what the artist did, how each stroke of the brush took the artist's mind on a new path...how they built and formed the final work…_

_In other ways, the painting stands alone, a still depiction of a slice of time, of space, a small window into an eternal realm where time means nothing, where movement and complication and the trials of life fade away...a painting is a tempting offer to escape into something else, to leave it all behind...a fantasy land where the unknown becomes attractive..._

_A painting, like other art, has its own agency, where no matter what the author or artist intended, no matter the meaning they laced into the pigments, no matter what they envisioned to swim off of the canvas into the mind space...the painting makes its own meaning, formed further with each set of eyes that enters its world...it is one of the few places where life can truly come alive, a beacon of solidarity between the messiness of life and the nothingness of the after...time frozen in a frame, yet immortal for everyone in the present and future to look upon it._

_Why might a person want a painting of themselves, indeed...to pour a version of themselves unbound by trials into a place where they can see themselves anew...to purify their countenance by having a shade of their soul as white as an angel's gown...extracted from the taint of the human experience…_

_...or perhaps they fear the inevitable consequence of life...like a tree leaves behind seeds, a mother and father leave behind children, a tragedy springs new hope to blossom out...a person can leave behind their legacy in a painting, freeing them from the clutches of death so that they may be eternal to all that come after them...so they are not forgotten._

_All those people in his life always forgot about him, forgot that he was a person, thought so little of him that forgetting him was inconsequential...he was the spot in the road that became rougher and rougher because everyone just kept walking on him, kept treating him like he was only a thing to trample on, to destroy...they taught him that the only person that he could rely on was himself…_

_Happiness was never something he thought he deserved...to him, that had always happened to other people...to better people...it was an emotion that he had doubted...it was a myth, to him...the light in his mind, the joy, and the intelligence...it was turned into something else...something sharper...guarded, behind a million walls that were still building themselves to this day, no matter how fast she tried to break them down…_

_And she thought that perhaps, with this painting, the poison of his father, of anyone who had looked down on him...it could be washed away, receded...maybe he could look at this painting and see that he had someone by his side, that he deserved someone by his side, someone that believed in him, that had faith in him…_

_That she wanted to return that light, wanted to show him that he deserved the world and everything with it...he deserved to be immortalized to the world, to have an artist build him and create a version of him that matched what was in his heart, that matched what he was too defeated to see...his beauty, his splendor...that trickster's sly grin, the sparkle in his eyes, the way he always looked like he just knew…_

_She wanted him to see himself as she saw him, a man that she was in love with, a man that she couldn't imagine being in the world without, for the world would turn dark as though the sun had taken leave of its post…_

_So, what was a painting?_

_A painting is a soul, shown as it is meant to be shown, without meddling, without the twist of evil, without the taint of the world._

_This painting was a depiction of the only thing that mattered in the world to her...her and Jack, together for as long as the world would allow…_

_...and if it took taking on the world to go further, that's what she was prepared to do._

_Now all she had to do was figure out where he was._

_Thankfully she found Gibbs heading down to the docks and caught him just in time._

" _Josh, where's-"_

_Her words diminished on their own at the same time as a grin crossed his mouth, and she knew that it was both her realization that Gibbs already knew what she was going to ask and that ridiculous twinkle in his eyes that had her silent now, tapping her foot impatiently._

" _Jack's down at the beach, next to the little lagoon down there."_

_The poor man was almost left behind without a word from her until she turned around and copied Jack's prayer hands at him, sending a quick "thank you" at him before racing through the sand, excitement suddenly thrumming through her, hearing his returned "welcome", though it was difficult to make out with all his chuckling._

_She had never really given Jack a gift before, and she couldn't wait to see him happy._

* * *

_By the time she reached the lagoon, her lungs felt like they had shrunk two sizes, her feet had sand permanently embedded in them, as in her haste, she had forgotten boots, and her eyes were still watering from the rushing wind that had attacked them._

_Jack was sitting just a few feet from the water edge, and…_

_...he was wearing different clothes._

_Any normal person and it would have never given her pause, but Jack rarely changed his outfit._

_A pair of crisp jet-black breeches and an equally black shirt adorned him, and that's all he had on, not including the ever-present bandana. She decided she rather liked him in all black. It complimented his hair._

_The smell of the sea grew stronger, strong salt and a heavy dampness, a floating mist that tickled her face, making her stop for a moment to linger in the sand, the wind blowing her hair around her face._

" _She's even more beautiful at night," she murmured, half to herself and half to Jack, as she gazed across the water, traveling across the moonlit reflections; constellations in the churning waves. He turned to look at her, half of his face illuminated, the other half hidden in shadow, but his eyes, his eyes were still glittering at her...the warmth held in them a substitute for the absent sun._

" _...She is," he agreed, turning up the corner of his mouth in a small smile, before turning back again, and she would perhaps suspect, but never really know that he was talking about more than just the sea._

" _Beautiful and terrible. Though, I suppose most things that are beautiful are also in some way terrible," and then she was sitting next to him on the sand, their shoulders touching._

" _She has the Pearl now...can't be that bad."_

_Those words washed over her...Jack rarely talked about the Pearl since...only glanced in the direction of the sea occasionally...he always knew where to look no matter where he was...and sometimes she wondered if he always knew where to look for her too…_

" _How are you?" she asked, keeping her voice quiet, telling him so much more than those three words, telling him that he didn't need to answer, that he could lie to her if he needed to...that she was prepared to listen to anything he had to say...that she was prepared to listen to his silence…_

_And he did stay quiet for a long time, the wind traveling between them carrying shared silent thoughts to the other, a connection that was so tangible, she could almost reach out and touch the invisible thread._

" _I wasn't there," she finally heard him say, but it took a moment for her to understand what he meant. "The Captain...they're supposed to guard the ship...protect it…where was I? Getting drunk and telling stories…"_

_The deep grit of pent-up frustration was laced into his voice, and it dazzled her, made her eyes sting at the corners with tears, tore at her heart that he could have ever thought that it was his fault, that he even blamed the loss of his ship on himself...a pair of shoulders that already had more weight than they could carry from all corners, all ends of everything...how could he have placed that at the very top without everything coming crashing down…_

_...how could she have fooled herself into believing that he was climbing, pushing past all of it, that he was healing beyond her worry, beyond her studying his face in moments where he wasn't looking, trying to find anything that..._

" _No...no, Jack," she was saying as her mind, her body, her entire being rejected the idea as forcefully as she would try and reject death bearing down upon her, "You listen to me," but he turned away, staring down the coastline, the line of his back becoming very still as though he was holding his breath._

" _Jack."_

_No response, nothing as she started to panic, started to feel so fearful that not even the trees or the beautiful ocean, not the texture of the sand beneath her, nothing could reach out and tug the cold dread from her muscles, the feeling of her love falling away from her again, crawling back into that dark place that she had worked so diligently to pull him from._

_She would be damned if it took him this time, repeating that in her mind, even saying it out loud under her breath as she climbed into his lap, ignoring his pitiful protests, coming to rest with each leg resting next to his, her hands braced against his chest...but he still wasn't looking at her, his gaze directed south..._

" _I said," she commanded, pulling his face up with two fingers, feeling the chin braids slide against them, "listen to me," but her voice turned to ash in her throat at the haunted look in his eyes, returning her to that first night, that terrible night, the sight of his wild eyes reflecting her own as she held his trembling body on the beach, whispering "she's gone" even as she herself wanted to dive into the water to push the ship back up with her bare hands…_

" _Why didn't you tell me?" and he didn't protest when she cupped his face with her hand. "I thought...I thought I was helping, that I was...that you were healing, starting to heal, but," she stopped, the immediate and terrifying thought taking over any other, "...I wasn't good enough."_

_Squandering her remaining energy away, dwelling on her failure...the only thing that had mattered to her was seeing a smile of his that carried no darkness, a smile that wasn't a mask hiding something that he didn't want to show...but the mask had been there all along, and here she was, feeling each memory of something approaching happiness...since, slipping through her fingers, all of them illusionary ropes that she had counted on to save both of them…_

_Then, a beacon of light came with his touch, the gentle sliding of his fingers through her hair, the soft caress of his fingers against her cheek, and the way his voice wrapped around the words as he said them, like he was scraping together some kind of imaginary happiness just for her…_

" _I never want to hear you say that again, Lizzie, not to me."_

" _But-"_

" _No. Never. Again. Do you understand me? You...if I didn't have you," he paused to gesture at the ocean, turned to incline his head towards the Cove, placed his hand against his own chest, "None of this would've been enough...I would've wasted away by now, immortality be damned…"_

_His eyes shut tight for just a second, his head shaking back and forth in rhythm with his breathing. "The Pearl may be gone, but she wasn't the only thing that...that…"_

_Then both of his hands were holding her face, his eyes holding an intensity that focused every ounce of her attention on what he said next, a kind of vow, something that chased some of the darkness away inside of her as quickly as it had raced in._

" _I don't know how to tell people I'm not okay...never...never really had anyone to tell that to, and I did feel spots of light...maybe I just didn't want to believe that I hadn't really gotten better, that it was going to take longer than I was prepared to wait…"_

_She murmured his name when her head fell forward against his chest, then murmured that she hated the people that had hurt him, whispered that she wished she could wring all of their necks...wrapped her fingers around chunks of his shirt and squeezed…_

_But what came out next, what floated into the air even as her voice was now scratchy with emotion, was her own vow, one that had been true since the beginning. "I'll wait forever for you to always feel the light, Jack, no matter how long it takes. I want you to look at the ocean again without feeling like something inside of you is missing…"_

_The sounds of the bugs in the jungle, the soft rush of water against the shore, even the sound of their own breathing...it was all so clear, so crystalline in that moment, on the precipice between falling back into tragedy and pushing forwards again into something that she couldn't quite name yet…_

" _But it's okay to feel like nothing will get better, it's okay to feel like that...you can't find that light without putting up with not having it. Just please, don't hide it from me."_

_There was a new look in his eyes then, as though her words had invaded that darkness, turning it just a shade lighter, rather than just covering it up until it fought through its restraints to take hold of him again...the journey so far had not been a failure, just...another step against an almost impossible enemy._

" _I don't want you thinking that it's your fault when…" he faltered, looking over her shoulder for a moment. "I used to look at the ocean when I needed something to remind me to keep going...I used to look at the Pearl," and he said the next seven words even more quietly, almost a whisper, as though they transcended everything else that had taken place already since she had found him sitting there, "but now I just look at you…"_

_His chest expanded under her hands as he took a deep breath. "You're kind of like my lighthouse, really...no matter how rough the storm gets, or how lost I get…" and he stopped again, letting the rest of the words come through a smile that made her heart swell...she very nearly said it, the three words that always seemed to sit just behind her lips, waiting to burst out every time they paraded through her mind, but like every other time, she kept it inside, pushing it back into the part of her mind that held the rest of her fantasies, things that would never come to be, things that were too good to believe._

_She could put up with being his lighthouse. It was more than enough until such a time when she could be the home beyond the lighthouse and the sea too._

" _I came down here to get you. Your ever-so-mysterious gift is ready."_

_If she didn't have a firm grip on reality and the concept of time and planetary mechanics, she would have sworn that the sun had already risen and was shining on his face with the way it lit up._

" _I was wondering if it was all a grand joke at this point…"_

_They both rose at the same time, and she gravitated to him, his arms wrapping around her for a moment, telling her that he was feeling better without saying anything. The sudden impulse to kick sand at him shot down her leg, and he gasped in both shock and jubilation, then looked at her like she had committed the greatest sin in the world, his body straight and affronted, all captain...while she acted like she was standing guilty of such a sinful crime...at least until his tongue poked out of his mouth and she broke down into a fit of laughter, getting words through somehow…"blackguard"..."knave"...pointing a finger at him with a "you" and then failing to finish whatever thought that was going to turn into…_

" _Me what? The most frightfully aggravating man in the world? The bane of your existence?"_

_She tried again with her finger, poked it into his chest this time, getting as far "you" again, and failing again…" Always summed up with 'pirate', but I fear it's redundant at this point."_

_Her long golden blonde hair fell into her face as she shook her head in mirth, before she stepped to the side of him, reaching down to close her hand around as much of his larger one as she could, giggling a little at the thought of leading him somewhere...last time she had done that he had taken her virginity…_

" _Come on Captain Sparrow, your gift awaits you."_

_And he let himself be led behind her, stealing as many opportunities to sneak kisses onto her neck as possible all the way back up to the Cove._

* * *

_Eyes of the townsfolk followed them as the two figures wound their way up to the Court chambers, eyes that knew but never told, eyes that reflected on a love that gave warmth to the streets, to other hearts that had ceased to know it, gave a joy to the air that made the wind whistle with song…_

_...eyes that waited for the crisscrossing threads of fate and destiny, for the masterwork of circumstance and that mystery of time...waited for it to awaken an awareness in the only hearts that didn't recognize that love...perhaps in themselves they saw it, but in the other...time and the Earth and the ocean weren't the only mysteries that fell just short of the human understanding...for now._

* * *

_After what seemed like ages, ages of Jack practically bouncing on his feet as he followed behind her, a joyous thing for her, ages of smelling the spicy scent of fire smoke, the burning oil in the lanterns, they finally reached the Grand Hall, her anticipation climbing to nearly unbearable levels…_

_Stepping just inside, she took Jack into the middle of the entrance room and stopped._

" _I know this may be difficult for you, but you're going to need to...actually, never mind, I'll cover them for you."_

_A cross between amusement and suspicion arched his eyebrow as his gaze bounced from the door to her, before they started to sparkle with the purest mischief she had ever seen from him._

_Suddenly he was sweeping his body down in a graceful bow, keeping his eyes locked on hers right up until he dipped his head at the end, before straightening back up. "As you wish, your Excellence."_

_It was her turn to stick her tongue out at him, shaking her head again. She turned and stepped towards the door, feeling the warmth of his body behind her...he was…_

_...he was humming. Their song...she could make out the exact notes that had the words 'Yo ho a pirate's life for me' playing in her head, the last word even making it out of her mouth on instinct, then she turned again to smile softly at him._

_Just as she reached down to wrap her fingers around the door handle, Jack's hand curled around her shoulder. "Wait, love."_

_Twisting to place herself directly in his arms, she searched his eyes. "Hmm?" and got a very endearing sight of him chewing on his bottom lip._

" _It's just that...I've never...been given a gift before...not freely anyway…" the words drifted off, but it was enough to make her stand there in shock, in disbelief that she hadn't...and barely fought down distaste again at everyone who had failed him._

_Life shouldn't have kept one of the very base pleasures of from him...a gesture of kindness, the expression of another wanting to make him happy…_

_A quiet "damn them" slipped out as she reached up to cup his face. "Save the thank you for later, when you can give them to me properly," and then she gave him a soft kiss, before turning them both so that he was in front of her._

" _Ok, turn and face the door, and...please be good."_

_A sound of faux annoyance left his mouth. "When am I ever not good?"_

" _I believe your profession sometimes hinges on you being not quite good."_

_Just as he began to imitate her "you're a good man" speech yet again, she reached up to cover his mouth with her right hand, resisting the sensation of his mustache tickling her palm, turning "you're a" into a muffled garble, his shoulders twitching instead with immediate laughter._

_Her other hand slid around his side to rest on his heart. "Just because this might be very good doesn't mean the rest of you is good all the time. Chicanerous, villainous, riff-raff, knavish-"_

" _-Kingly."_

" _And if you behave, you might even get a crown." His head tilted back at that so that she knew he was smiling._

" _I can get a crown anytime I want, darling."_

_She sighed, raising both hands to cover his eyes. "A crown would look wonderous on your head," she said into his ear, "and I do apologize if I smear your precious kohl."_

_Reaching around him, she opened the door, and gently pushed him forward, listening to his hair beads and trinkets tinkling together. "Onward, Captain."_

_And onward he went, into the room, until she stopped him in the middle just in front of the painting…_

_It took her breath away, again, just like it had stolen her breath the first time she had laid her eyes on it, the perfection, the majesty of it...no painting that she had ever seen rivaled the beauty, the way it seemed to push into her soul, through her eyes, through the breath she inhaled suddenly, such a simple thing, a collection of strokes from a brush onto canvas...yet it held her entire world._

" _Don't open your eyes yet," she whispered, drawing her hands away to curl them around his arms instead, steadying herself from the sudden weakness of her body._

_No, she wanted to see his face, wanted to see the light bloom in his eyes...kept whispering "keep them closed" as she stepped around him to stand just to the left of the painting, curled her own hands up around each other._

_She waited, waited until the quivering inside of her body couldn't be contained any longer...then her feet were carrying her forward again, her hand coming to curl around his._

" _Go ahead," she said quietly, squeezing his fingers even as hers were trembling._

_When he looked, when that sharp recognition made his eyes wide, when his lips parted...even with her back to the painting, she could trace the path his eyes took, as though he was seeing a new world for the first time, one that she had already visited, knew when his gaze followed the black wood of his Pearl, along the railing, when it stopped and lingered on the rays of the setting sun, then crept up the length of their bodies, standing on deck, faces pointed out towards the horizon with the determination of Pirate Kings, the golden crowns on their head illuminated so that they glittered with the brightest golden shimmer._

" _You deserve to be lauded, recognized, honored, you deserve the world...I thought maybe this...having a place where you are still with your Pearl, and she is still with you...we will always take back what is ours no matter who tries to take it away…_

" _Somehow, we'll always take it back...through thought, through dreams, memories...what matters to us never really leaves us, Jack._

" _People will look at this and remember, remember you, remember us, the steps we took here, the things we did, and the Pearl will never die. She's immortal now."_

_He was whispering her name, his voice lingering in the air, the layers of him bleeding away until just Jack was standing there, and then he was saying nothing, his eyes were searching for her and she met them with a gentle gaze, her finger reaching up to stroke his cheek._

_The next thing she knew was the warmth of his chest, the cloth of his black shirt meeting her face when he gathered her to him, wrapping his arms around her in a hug, rocking her body back and forth. "It's beautiful," he said against the top of her head, so quietly that she barely heard him. And she knew it was, with the charcoal of the wood, the soft orange of the sun's light, the life in their eyes, preserved there for eternity...she could even hear the ocean, the song of birds in the sky, the creaking of the ship...all of it, as though it was a symphony that lived within her._

_They stood like that, embracing each other, for longer than she cared to keep track of. Time could be at a standstill, it could be accelerating...all she knew was that time was being kind to them, allowing them to have this moment, a moment that set in another thread between them, another silk thread in the web that held them together, happy prisoners to each other, oblivious to the reflection of each other's hearts, mirrors to one another._

* * *

Memories behave in strange ways, twisting and turning from day to day, year to year, fading in and out, sometimes disappearing entirely, then returning like they had never vacated the mind in the first place.

But this memory, the gateway to it was always the same, the one detail that had risen above all others, was the sound of Jack's heart when she had laid her head on his chest...it hadn't been a quick beat of happiness, or a frantic reactive beat from the painting...no, it had been calm, steady, almost like it was trying to give her a message, through his body, through the soft fabric of his shirt, onto her cheek, that for all of the work she had done to get him to that point, that for everything he had been through...he had been at peace, as he had held her, staring at her gift.

It had cemented the idea, then more than ever before, that the heart, in the end, rules life. The true motivations in life, the true goals, the real challenges, and victories...they all come to be because of the heart.

A simple thing compared to the brain, but yet it held so much power...a catalyst in the beautiful act of making love, like wind to a fire...the beating of a heart makes that fire within burn so harshly that it took her to another world when Jack held her, when he gave her the kind of pleasure that left her out of her body, out of her mind, perhaps not even human anymore…

And then sometimes he made her heart beat just like it had in the Grand Hall, steady and strong, unbreakable, matching his as she leaned back against his warm chest, solid against her shoulders.

Memories were also particularly temperamental, battling with anxiety, manipulation, the wrong environment, environments that are too right...and occasionally, they just flow as easily as a stream down a mountain...or as easily as they are allowed while being wrapped in Jack's arms, surrounded by steaming hot water, with six candles burning, his steady breathing, and the haze of relaxation that she was sure was intoxicating both into a lull.

She rather liked the idea of comparing the mind to water...free-flowing, as a mind should be, taking the shape of its environment, yet able to destroy that space in a moment's notice… corrode the obstacles in its path…the mind was always moving, even during sleep, times of calm...much like the water in the tub, still and warm at first glance, her mind was still churning inside, still skipping from memory to memory, sailing through time without aim or direction, reminding her of the delights of a museum visit, or making her smell the ocean, feel the sand…

And it was only the presence of the still figure behind her that let her mind go so freely...her ultimate rock, her all-consuming beacon of peace...she fancied that she could be in the middle of a hurricane, clinging to a rock, and she would still be as calm as though she was lounging in a sailboat on a still ocean, if she had Jack with her.

"Love?" she asked, half a question, and half just wanting to get his attention for the sake of it, though playing with his fingers beneath the water was doing that just as well. A vibration against her neck, a soft "hmm" that sent goosebumps across her skin, was her reward.

"Did you ever see Jaws?"

A soft chuckle was next.

"What?"

She was genuinely confused about why he was laughing at her.

"Nothing, darling, it's just that your questions are always either...like a shallow puddle, where I can just play it in for a little bit, or they are as deep as the Marianas Trench, where I need a mini-submarine and several hours to untangle all of the sub-questions within the main question…"

"Well, this one is just a yes or no answer."

"I did see Jaws, saw it more than once, actually."

She'd seen it the day after it had come out...really any movie involving the ocean was an instant ticket for her.

"I remember everyone being terrified of the ocean when it came out...they were all terrified of water in general actually. Some people even refused to step in puddles."

"Can't imagine why. The government was exceptional at warning people about possible dangers. How on earth could the presence of a manhunter suddenly cause chaos? Not that sharks are an actual danger, as long as you're not stupid…"

"And people, well even now, get far too worked up over things without actually looking at the situation…"

His finger was making tiny circles on her stomach now. "What about you? Still think great white sharks are cute? If I remember correctly, the shark in Jaws did, in fact, tear someone's arm off…"

Of course, he remembered the conversation...she hadn't even mentioned it specifically…

"You're thinking of Deep Blue Sea. Genetically modified sharks in that one, made smarter or something...it's hard to keep the shark movies straight these days…and as for your question, yes, I do. Dolphins might be cuter though."

"Mmm. Cute on the surface maybe...but they are kind of assholes. Sharks might be better. Funny, that. Dolphins have the reputation of being the ocean Jesus, and sharks are Satan…"

People feared what they didn't understand. Some things never changed, she had found. Spiders, snakes, sharks, pirates, fire...it didn't matter what the "danger" was...most of the time the reputation was purely built on human ignorance…

She leaned into his body, tilting her head over and up to press a kiss against his jaw. "To me, the fear of pirates and sharks are much the same thing…"

The only response she got to that was a soft kiss on the lips, his hand coming out of the water to press her head against his shoulder, his fingers twirling around her wet hair. Then he whispered something that had a quiet giggle escaping her mouth.

"Jellyfish."

"Killer whale," she shot back.

"And here I thought you were just comparing sharks to pirates…"

"Now I really do have to laugh at you."

And laugh she did.

"At least you make do on your claims," he said with a smile in his voice.

"As do you. This tub is rather lovely. I think we could spend more time in here."

"Mmm," he hummed again, the water churning when his hand breached the surface again, sliding down her chest to close around her breast. "I'm sure we could make it worth its money."

"You actually bought this?" she asked incredulously, half distracted by the continued direction of his fingers.

"I don't steal everything you know."

"Generally, if it costs money you do."

"Well, why waste my talents?" and she was immediately agreeing with him, whatever it was that they had been talking about, when his hand finished its descent south...she tried to blame the dim light, the smell of the candles, the warm water...even tried to blame the onslaught of memories for muddling her brain at that moment, because surely a man couldn't take all the credit…

...except he damn well was, could, did...whichever...always did...always made her heart beat faster, whether they were talking about jellyfish...the ocean...some damn thing that Jack narrowly escaped...he liked to tell those stories, and she always reminded him that the first time he had 'narrowly escaped', she took most of the credit…

"You do have a talent for having talents...very talented…your talents have talents..." and then she briefly wondered how many times she could use the word talent and have it still make sense...the tip of his finger gently sliding across her folds was scrambling her brain, but the contact was gone as quickly as it had come…

"And you like to tease far too much," she added, breathless.

He dipped his head to kiss her shoulder at that, smiling. "Which is the greater sin, teasing or stealing?"

"Depends on the situation."

"I bet I'm so talented that I could do both at the same time. Then we'd really be in a quandary."

Not that she had to remind him, but he had, in fact, already done both of those things at the same time, much to her chagrin. "You're insufferable."

"Maybe, maybe. So, going to tell me what else you have been thinking about whilst using me as a pillow?"

Dolphins, sharks, paintings, beaches, the heart...anything and everything really.

"I have been carefully constructing and organizing strategies to ignore all of the shit we are in so we can stay in this tub forever."

His chest rose against her with the reminder of how much  _shit_  they really were in, a sigh tickling her ear. "It does rather feel like we are blockaded inside of a building with a mob on the other side of the door, doesn't it?"

Yes, without food in the fridge, the only weapons being a baseball bat and a spatula, a busted phone...also the mob had rabid dogs, guns, grenades...probably a tank or two...the shower didn't work, the carpet had nails stuck in it, the couch was completely deflated…

...and as her brain tried to make the analogy as unfortunate and fucked as possible, she reminded herself that they could always escape through the basement, possibly, perhaps the phone could be fixed, they could wash in the sink…

They would make it out alive, they always did...and besides, the baseball bat wasn't such a bad weapon...and maybe they could pull a Steve (or Negan, depending on whether her mood was Stranger things or Walking Dead), and take the nails out of the carpet to put them  _in_  the baseball bat.

Could probably kill someone with a spatula if you tried hard enough...and for the sake of argument, the spatula in her mind was made out of metal...it was her analogy and she could do what she wanted with it.

"Well, we walked into the snake pit ourselves...we either need to pray that we can survive the venom, or cut all of their heads off before they bite us."

"They might still bite us even if we do cut their heads off."

"Riddle them with bullets then."

"I like the way you think, love."

She liked the way he thought too, as though he had a separate brain inside his normal brain that was set aside to only think about her...like with the dolphin, saying the dolphin must like her…

"Jack, remember that time with the dolphin?"

"When you whined about not having a camera? Sure, I remember."

"I didn't  _whine_ , but yes. I was just thinking...perhaps this is heading into more philosophical waters, but have you ever thought about...like, the preservation of things? How humans are so hellbent on capturing moments...through paintings, photographs, videos...and we talk a lot about preserving other things too...saving the planet, protecting our bodies...every cereal under the sun has 'heart healthy' plastered across the box now…"

"I mean, the heart is rather important to preserve...probably wouldn't be sitting in this tub enjoying this nice hot water if we didn't have hearts…interesting contrast, isn't it though? We use an art form, something that is meant to spin our imaginative images into something, to capture  _reality_ , to capture something completely outside of the mind...talk about something having two sides of a coin…"

"I think the imagination can be someone's reality...especially when the world they live in is one they no longer want to see…"

_Like when something you dearly loved was taken from you, and all you want is to have something that makes you feel like it never left. Jack and his Pearl...her and Jack..._

"You mean like when a certain special lady has a very special painting done for you?"

Her mouth dropped open just a little when he said that, because  _she_  had been trying to bring it up...and had  _not_  expected him to do it first.

"You remember that too."

His arms tightened around her, and his head was suddenly buried in her neck. "I remember. The first gift I had ever gotten. Hard to forget something like that."

"You spent a lot of time staring at that painting."

"I had a lot of reasons to spend time staring at it. My entire world was put in that painting...my ship, you...the sea...us being free, being the rulers of our own reality and imagination...when I couldn't sleep, I always went and sat in front of it, and I always found new things to see...like a particular color in your hair, or a new jewel on the crowns...kind of like you with my hair, it felt like an ongoing discovery."

"You are an ongoing discovery even still, Jack, with more than just your silly hair."

"Think the painting went somewhere after we left for good? I have always wondered where it ended up…"

So had she…

"The irony here being that for having something meant to preserve a moment, we didn't really preserve our time with it...but almost everything can be walked away from eventually, and besides part of the point was to have others remember you too…"

"At this point, there are plenty more reasons for me being a bit unforgettable more so than just a painting."

They sat there in silence for a moment.

"...Think it's in a museum somewhere?" he asked, his voice hopeful. "Hung up with other historic paintings? Maybe we're hanging out next to the Mona Lisa at the Louvre…"

Well, that  _could_  be possible...except they had been in the Louvre.

"Jack, we've stood in front of the Mona Lisa-"

"Yeah," and she felt him shift his hands to count on his fingers, "72 years ago. Actually, that same night, Hitler killed himself. Not sure why I remember that correlation. Besides, we only looked at the painting for about a minute and a half...we were kind of breaking in, or did you forget?"

"No, I didn't forget...hard to forget your hair-brained schemes and ideas-"

"-Actually, that one was your idea-"

"-Oh right, of course it was. Just like it was 'my idea' to try and escape the Louvre by taking a route through the sewers…"

"-At least I had an escape plan for us. You wanted to take the roof, which, mind you, would have resulted in certain death."

"The sewers had  _rats_."

"We had guns."

"Yes, well, the little fuckers are hard to aim at."

"And we're not Batman. Us normal plebeians don't do rooftops well...movies lie."

"So do you. And I'm not sure I could take you seriously in a cape."

He made a noise of indignation.

"I would look just fine in a cape."

"And remember whose idea it was to 'politely borrow' that motorboat in whichever southern tropical island we were in at the time…"

"And it would have worked better had you not argued with me for five minutes-"

"-Well, excuse me for wanting us to not turn the river into a tomb. The motorboat was fun though."

"Everything we do is fun, darling."

"Don't suppose you had that thought process when you accepted Suzuki's job?"

Instant regret slammed into her for saying it.

"Can't say that I expected it to turn into such a shit storm…"

"I know...I agreed to it as readily as you did...but hey, it's us against the world again...we've done it before and survived…"

"I know we have, Lizzie...this just feels different somehow...like someone took the rulebook away...like we are trying to navigate an obstacle course blindfolded. I don't like it."

"Something tells me the rest of the world doesn't care about what we like and don't like."

He didn't say anything, just leaned his head against hers…

There was a visual in her mind just then, of the escape room that they did...except in her version, there was no clues, no easy paths, no way out...just her and Jack against the impossible.

Then again, life, death, impracticality, predictability, the world, the people in it...they could all be like the heart, sending out signals, keeping everything turning and spinning...they could be like the brain, so complex and intertwined that it was impossible to find an end or beginning, to find the reasons for the reasons, to understand them, and then…

...sometimes none of those things mattered at all, they were just a set of syllables, an empty charade that she was trying to attach meaning to, when the only important thing was to attach meaning to the moment they were in, to take each step just to take it, just to move forward, even if that step closed a hundred doors on them, opened a hundred more, made a hundred new enemies...sent them to death's door...made them want to step through it…

Anything could happen, and the world didn't give a damn about them...the only thing they could do was react...keep reacting.

"We'll be alright, Jack," she said, echoing one of his earlier sentiments. "We'll be alright."

If only she could convince her mind of that.


	27. A Hundred Truths and Lies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 27! Hope everyone enjoys this one! :)

September 17th, Thursday Morning, 5 AM

* * *

Rich, cloaked in tinted black cars, watching the city fly by tucked away in the safety of what money can offer...poor, watching the rich look at them with that complication in their eyes...to help or to ignore, to be ignorant or to lower themselves for the gratification or heroship…

...Old, seeing the thundering world with knowing eyes, eyes that have seen too much, perhaps things they shouldn't have, but should and shouldn'ts sometimes get lost in a world like this...the old go day by day battling with losing their place, their belonging. Concepts and connections, things and places, things within those places, places made by those things...language, people...everything changes, while the old are still tethered to one place, one time...maybe everyone is doomed to live in the world that produced them, only seeing the new through a glass window….

A window caked with grime and must and the cloud of age, true age that comes from sitting alone in a desolate wasteland of technology, advancement...humans will never really advance, the race is eternally doomed to running in place, looking at an imaginary horizon, full of imaginary dreams and imaginary futures, hollow, obscure, obtuse even...they fret over what new scientific discovery might come about, they squabble over laws and policies, riots in the streets and death threats being commonplace, all over social abstractions and  _identity_ …

Yet all of them...at least,  _most of them_ , fail to see the only real truth... _life_  as a concept, life as a whole, no matter who is trying to define it...it doesn't mean anything...the entirety of the animal kingdom could be erased off of the face of the earth... _barely anything would change_...humans could all die tomorrow,  _nothing_  would change...humans live, and humans die, and the things they do that have any impact on their individual lives...it floats away, becomes nothing in the grand ether of everyone else…ideas and thoughts and legacies may linger still, but even those are forgotten eventually, left to be twisted and recycled into something entirely unrecognizable…

There is a smaller truth, one that grinds against the utter base of humanity...that they are all expendable, blips in the universe...that smaller truth of individual power, of presence, of mindfulness...the human mind is capable of believing itself so important that it can assign importance to all minds around it, to every mind on Earth, the selfishness of being a person, of accepting the sentience of oneself...it is the folly of man to think of themselves as important...why live if you cannot have a reason to live, but then they fill their time with searching, reaching, looking, and never finding the answer, because there are no answers, there is  _nothing_  except for the inevitable coffin and loss of everything about a person that the individual mind  _thought_  mattered.

So, what then is the point in the creation of a human, and what motivation does a human have to take every step across the Earth, to open their eyes from the temporary death of slumber...to create thought, to make waves, to  _act_...what do the young see the world as, those that are not jaded, processed...do they see a giant sandbox, do they see something to play in, to mold and shape...how can a human do anything knowing that there is always an end?

The world played a neat trick on people, on their minds...populated their dreams and their thoughts with so much imagery, so  _much_ , that it made itself endless, like the sea, a vast expanse of space...like a city, where no matter where you stand, the roads turn into another road, and then another road...just another idea that on the surface has meaning, but when examined closer, joins the plethora of substance on the planet that is pointless in the end. The people who built the cities, they are all long gone, the people enjoying the cities now, even if enjoying is a thin word to use, they will soon be dead…

Death, such an unforgiving concept, yet beautiful in its own right...everything succumbs to it, inanimate and organism alike. Even the greats...Gandhi, Hitler, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, all of them, for all of their grand ideas, and grand talents, and grand presence, even they couldn't escape death because death does not care about paintings or inventions, politics or  _peace_ , death exists as a reminder…

But being human himself, it would be  _dreadfully_  boring to detach from life, to accept that nothing he was doing would last...true enough, he often questioned everything with a tired "why", went backward and forward in his mind about the  _point_  of all of it...especially since the one thing he believed that made life worth living until there wasn't a life to live...it had been taken from him too... _love_ , life's cruel tease...it made you enjoy your time, made you forget that it couldn't go on forever...and then when it's gone, you wonder whether it was even real, or if it was just a figment of your imagination, like everything else.

The problem with sentience, with that  _awareness_ , is that humans cannot accept that nothing means anything, they can't go on like that, so they conjure meaning, they find it in the most mundane places, they try to connect things together, wild networks of images, thoughts...they create, and expand, and nurture...they convince themselves, as far as they possibly can, that they  _are_  immortal.

The door behind him opened with a soft  _click_ , scratching the thin carpet of the luxury hotel room, and then closed with another soft click. Repetition...sometimes he  _liked_  that.

"Izumi-san?"

 _Naoki_.

A quiet man, yet that didn't fool many people into thinking he was vacant, far from it, in fact. He was the only person in the world that he found to be on par with his own intellect.

At least,  _until now_.

Because life had given him a drive...a  _goal_...the only other thing besides love that kept his heart beating, that kept him from giving up…

 _Two_ goals, intertwined and roped together...the mechanics of such a union unclear still, but he would unravel them.

A concept... _intuition_  had always been abstract to him, imaginary...logic, reason and evidence was what made decisions...not  _feeling_.

But...he felt a presence now...an equal...if such a thing exists among people...like his mind had found the corresponding card in the deck, the hero to the villain...and  _those_  things definitely didn't exist, not in the real world.

And if they did, which part would each of them occupy? The classical dichotomy of good versus evil, yet another thing that death made superfluous...villains and heroes died in the end regardless of who came out on top…

Jack Sparrow...a  _thief_ , yet somehow he knew that he was so much more than that...an  _enigma_...a puzzle...something to unravel, and he knew even now that every time he stripped another layer of the man away, he was risking a piece of himself at the same time...able to twist Scotland Yard into a mess just from a threatening phone call and a ruse…

Chess...a dangerous game of chess between him and  _Jack_  was just beginning, starting to form, both of them miles away from each other, not yet seeing clearly, seeing the other as a shapeless entity...to the other, they could be  _anything_ , but soon they would reveal one card at a time, until there was no more deck to draw from…

...until one of them was dead.

"They're all so small, aren't they?"

Naoki was standing beside him now, holding the same tumbler of sake that his two fingers gripped, the liquid untouched.

Both of their gazes were drawn to the small crowd of people standing on the street corner below the hotel room, waiting for the final bus to arrive, only half of them illuminated by the orange glow of the tall street light. Strange for people to be out there at five in the morning, perhaps not for the big city, but  _Bath_...

"From up here, everything looks small," Naoki replied, sweeping his glass in an arc across the window.

The world  _was_  small, in many ways, no matter how vast it may seem, because the only part of a world that a person can see at any given time was the distance their eyes could look...beyond that, the world may not even exist...and the people, to most...to  _most_ , everyone else just looked like faceless shapes, shifting and moving across the ground like items on conveyor belts, always moving and traveling to the  _next_ , to somewhere else…

But then, for every person, there was a specially selected handful of  _others_ , people that matched a certain formula... _friends, lovers, husbands, wives...even idols..._ everyone in the world was something to someone else, and beyond that familiar circle, people were just a  _concept_.

Because no one in the world cared about  _everyone_ , no matter what they claimed.

"Yet, out there somewhere, are a hundred things that could ruin me."

"Or a hundred things that could help you."

"Ah, always the optimist, Naoki. You should teach your brother that trick."

"Koji is far too stubborn to learn anything from me."

As he said it, he turned towards him to highlight the bruise on his neck.

"So, did you come to tell me how it is that Suzuki escaped?"

"I...didn't think I needed to."

His gaze was drawn away from the window then, peering down into the dark brown sake instead. "Indeed. At least this way I can now ask her why she lied to me before I personally end her."

"Lied? You think she was lying?"

"Oh, I don't think, I  _know_."

"Care to explain?"

It was the hidden things, the mechanics behind the surface that gave people away, the things that they couldn't prevent with speech alone, things that manipulation and talking and misleading couldn't cloak.

"Let's take it one at a time, shall we? He started, turning to face Naoki. "Jack Sparrow, the mysterious thief. We know he is resourceful, smart, not one to cower."

Naoki nodded, a look of mutual suspicion adorning his face.

"Yet, he might as well not exist. He's made no move."

"That we've seen."

"Oh no, Naoki, Sparrow isn't a man to whisper here and there, shift little things into place slowly,  _unless_  necessary. He is a man that likes results,  _quickly_. Sure, he can play a long game when he feels  _bored_ , but when there is a real threat, he doesn't  _play_ , he  _works_."

"You...think she warned him about you?"

"I do, which brings us to our first lie. She does know where he lives. The fact that she went to such lengths to protect him...it speaks of a closer acquaintance than she let on."

"Protect him?"

"Ah, that brings us to our second lie. When I say 'protect him', I mean protect h _er_  for him."

"The woman she talked about...Elizabeth?"

" _Elizabeth_. I believe her and Sparrow are involved...romantically. It is the only reason that he is being quiet. He has other things to worry about besides himself. If he didn't, I suspect I would have had several near death experiences already."

He could tell that Naoki wanted to ask about his connection to  _Liz_ , but wisely avoided it.

"And is there anything else? What about the evidence?"

What about the evidence,  _indeed_.

"It is possible that Sparrow has it, but she could have been lying about that too. There is a child at stake...that drives any person to extreme decisions."

Naoki downed his sake in one elegant swallow, and then sighed.

"So, what is the plan?"

 _The plan_.

The  _chessboard_.

Where did the pieces fit, and who had which piece? Where did everyone stand in this story of insanity and crime, of morals and lack thereof…

The police, the  _protectors_ , working diligently in the background, yet oblivious to the leak in their system...the Cartel, the other half of the battlefield...Elizabeth,  _his target_ , Gabriella...an innocent caught in the middle of everything, and her  _parents_...victims of the poison…

Like  _his wife_ …

Jack, the  _other player_...still shadowy across the table, keeping his strategies and plays to himself for now…

And all of the unknowns, having not yet revealed themselves to the challengers, wildcards thrown in along the way to shake the game up.

Was it the puppet masters, were they going to be the last ones standing? Him and Jack, alone and bleeding,  _alone without anyone else_ , fighting to the death...or was it going to be a different sort of game...where there were no real challengers, were everyone was fighting everyone else...where they all realized that good and evil, power and knowledge...the only thing that ever mattered was who  _won_  in the end...which one of them got to forget about death just for a little longer.

A game of intelligence, of information revealed, of hands shown, a  _cold war_ , fought in the silence, in the dark of night, by  _knights_ , the kind that only fought for themselves, and their own worlds, their own little worlds...what did he have to fight for at this point?

 _Revenge_...Jack Sparrow had interfered in his life, and that was something he could not permit.

Elizabeth had killed his wife.

Fate putting two people together that were both going to die by his hand...how  _interesting._

 _But none of that meant it was going to be easy. The only thing that life had to offer, besides death, was sometimes wishing death may come a little sooner to avoid the unforgiving nature of life..._ sometimes life overcame death in that respect, teaching death a new meaning of cruel, because life almost  _cared_  that it tortured, ate away,  _bruised_...while death just ended things, erased things...life carried on, and  _on_ , prolonging all of the pain it collects and builds along the way.

"We need to find Suzuki. I want you to go to the airport. Look for her there. Stay there until you find her. Bring Tsubasa. When you do find her, let me know."

His first move. Take down the piece on the chessboard that was already chipped, already crumbling onto the surface...the first  _losing_  pawn.

In the background...he needed to figure out what Jack knew...what his thoughts were...whether he was prepared to throw the chessboard to the ground to win, or if he  _cared_  about the pieces…

What kind of enemy was he?

"Hai, mochiron."

And what kind of pawns was everyone else?

Could they become queens or kings, depending on the moves of the players, or would they go rogue...playing their own game off the board.

As it was with the way of the world, there was never any real control, just the illusion that you could control.

To some, it was enough.

"Izumi-san?"

"Hm?"

"Why count Sparrow as an offensive enemy? Why not defensive?"

He thought about the question for a moment.

" _Because_ , Naoki, it's the same reason that he sees me as an offensive enemy. We have both stepped into the others periphery, territory,  _circle_ , and neither of us like an intrusion. Also, collect Suzuki's vehicle. I have plans for it."

The other man nodded once and left the room just as he finally finished his glass of sake.

* * *

The mirror across the room held her reflection, her black hair swept up in a neat ponytail, dark brown lipstick adorned her lips, and a stillness lay in her eyes. She looked perfectly  _professional._

_Suzuki, the assassin. Suzuki, the guardian. Suzuki...what else was she?_

A dull gray, a gray the same color as the disgusting slush in the winter, that dirty gritty gray, the entire room was washed in it...it touched everything, turned the walls bland, washed out the red in the bed comforter…

...just like everything was blanketed by the dull melancholy of a morning without a rising sun, that stillness...almost as though the world was tired, waking up with labored breathing, wanting nothing more than to shut the city back down, turn the sky dark again, and make the earth fade away into the distant background of the universe.

Her hands were rubbing against the rough fabric of the comforter every time they twitched,  _trembled_  with some deep-rooted reserve of nervousness...but her back was straight, her chin raised...the heaviness of her gaze had been leveled at the door of her hotel room for ten minutes, not that she expected anyone to come through it.

7 A.M., the busses were running, the city had come out of its temporary death...London never slept, but here, the dark erased almost any signature of life...turning everything... _peaceful_.

At least, it was peaceful to the people who didn't know better...good for them, having that kind of awareness only sapped happiness...the two halves, happy and ignorant, smart and desolate. Knowing too much, it took the mystery out of life, like a child unwrapping his Christmas presents in July, or someone learning their death date at the age of eleven. You stop running, you stop searching for answers. Instead, you search for ways to make the answers you have make  _sense_.

Not that anyone really succeeds...people like her, like Jack, Elizabeth... _Izumi_ , Arturo...they had all seen the construction of the game, the bits and pieces and the inner workings, the faults, the holes...all they had left was conquering...making the world know they  _knew_ , knew how it worked, knew how to play, knew how to  _win_

Some people were lucky enough to have someone to  _win_  for, someone to step into the wild with, to take the colors of the world and paint their own picture...and some people were too interested in the game to remember that there were  _others_ around them, that  _others_  could mean something.

The challenge was to keep playing, to throw all of your chips in  _besides_  the ones that matter, because once you bet it all, once you  _lose_  it all, you understand only in that moment that playing the game was never worth all of that, that you lost everything because you wanted to win, because stepping away was never an option.

Pride could be a nasty possession, and it did  _possess_.

And she was  _playing_ , stepping into the open world with enemies hunting her down...the city... _time_ , luck...the big challengers, those ones that she couldn't control...humans, they could be pinned down,  _learned_...but concepts, things that exist in the membranes of society, of the universe...they had powers beyond her understanding.

There was a million hotel rooms like this in the UK, all filled with the same shitty televisions, the same crusty carpets, the same windows overlooking the same scenery...the only difference is whether the person staying in them is staying to run away from life, or to run into life...or if they are waiting for life to run to them.

But she had a special case...she was running to  _get_  life back, to reclaim something...it made her feel like a hero for a second...in a world where everything was painted black and white, human souls were good and evil, and evil was conquered…

That world didn't apply when the hero spent the other half of her day killing people.

When you climb a mountain, you start at the bottom, and you look up before you start...you see how high the world goes, how much height you are going to ascend…

...and it makes you feel small, it makes you feel like the mountain owns you, like the  _world_  owns you, and when you start to climb, that feeling fades every time you make dust and debris fall down from your feet...you're getting somewhere, you're going higher...your muscles may ache, your skin may burn, but you're still climbing.

Then you reach the top, maybe after a day, maybe a few days...you breathe in the air, you look around, feel the stillness, or the wind hitting your cheeks...and you ask yourself…

_Now what?_

Because that accomplishment, that sense of fulfillment...it gives way to realizing that nothing changed, that all you did was climb a mountain, all you did was climb it...you didn't move it, you didn't change it, you just climbed it, and now you have to climb down back into the shit, back into the cesspool…

She had stopped climbing mountains, but she was still rising and falling, winning and losing, and the cycle, the  _wheel_ , it was never going to stop spinning, not for her, not for anyone.

That concept, of winning and losing, playing the game...it wasn't real, no one ever won, not really. People might gain for a little while, they might be on top for five minutes, an hour, a few days, but another always comes to take the crown, to put you back in second place...and when you did get that last word in, when you did come out on top for that infinitesimal amount of time...someone else always got burned...that was the consequence of  _wanting_ to win.

You left behind casualties.

Perhaps she should feel bad about what she did to Jack...to Lizzie...perhaps she did...but that wild variable...amidst all of the planning and coordinating, thinking...the variable was the moment, and the impulsiveness of humans...angry, reckless, like the best computer in the world still fucking up because it is a hunk of metal and plastic and it and everything else in the world will never be without faults.

The beginning of life...infants, and then children...their slate is clean, unmarked...she thought people should envy them more, recognize the purity of them. Only the child can be surrounded by evil and depravity and  _know_  that there is no path to take, yet look up into the sky and see something better, see a world away from their own.

Even a child living in perhaps the greatest cesspool on Earth...a drug cartel...Gabriella was a soldier, no doubt...intelligent beyond her years, always so curious, sometimes to a disadvantage. She practically lived at the library...at least when she was home. Now she was being used as punishment...and perhaps the thing that terrified her the most about it, was Brielle figuring out the reality of everything as she got older...understanding the depravity of what her father had turned into...how close she was to death every second of her life...both her own death and the death of those around her...she feared that time would make the light in that little girl's eyes go out as it had done to her so long ago, before she took her first life, before she even saw a gun.

Sometimes she saw herself in the way Brielle turned the pages of books, like she was searching for something beyond the paper and ink...in the way her eyes, even now, would regard strangers with uncertainty,  _suspicion_...the little girl's eyes reminded her of someone else too, in those moments when she feared she knew too much or had started to...it was Jack's eyes, that jade, that... _age_  in them, as though she was already prepared to wash her hands of the world and the people, plans, a future...everything be damned.

Jack's eyes had changed since...but she knew that the cold could return to them just like winter returns on the heels of fall...all it would take was the wrong intrusion, a crack in the carefully constructed life he surrounded himself with.

And she would be damned if she let Gabriella go through life like Jack had...a hand on a gun and an eye over his shoulder every waking moment... _no_ , Gabriella would know life, enjoy life, just like Rosalina kept telling her…" _Hay muchas maravillas en la vida, pero solo las verás si tratas a la vida misma como una maravilla_."

_There are many wonders of life, but you will only see them if you treat life itself as a wonder._

A fine goal, if life was worth treating wonderfully.

That was what divided people, in the end, really. Those that could, and those that couldn't anymore.

She was determined to make the line between them a chasm for that little girl so that she may never need to cross over.

Taking a deep breath, rising from the bed on the edge of her inhale, she let the air out of her lungs slowly, with a measured evenness, then stepped over to the hotel phone, dialing a number that she barely needed to think about anymore, yet the way her fingers deliberately punched in the numbers…

The voice on the other line answered on the second ring.

" _Bueno?"_

"Nicolas, buenos dias, or should I say buenas noches?"

There was a rustling noise on the other end, probably a pack of cigarettes, or he was opening a fresh case of beer.

" _Hola, Suzuki. Hay noticias_?"

For a moment, she wondered what all he knew...surely he had seen the bomb threat covered on the news…

"Que sabes?"

 _What do you know_ …

" _It was all over the news...the violencia at the Departamento de Policia...I imagine that was the price to pay for this mess…"_

"Si...this  _mess_  indeed...but it is hopefully over soon. How is Rosalina?"

" _Rosalina...she's...fine. Worried, but then I think we all are."_

"Better than being  _cómodo_ , I think. I called you to tell you that my part in this is done, as is Arturo's, hopefully. He got what he wanted, I got what I wanted...I'll be back in Méjico

by tonight...well,  _morning_  there."

" _Me alegro. And my niñita_?"

"I am going to collect her as soon as I hang up the phone. As soon as I have her, she'll be safe."

" _Arturo is a slippery man."_

"Si, he is, but he gains nothing from her retention."

A few moments went by before he spoke again.

" _I hope you're right."_

In the background, she heard a soft female voice ask something about Gabriella, and Nicolas replied with a " _soon, Rosa_ "...

"Yo también, Nicolas. I will see you when your sun rises. Adios-"

" _One more thing, Suzuki...are you sure that everyone got what they wanted?"_

"...you mean the Yakuza? They are not a threat, Nicolas. I assure you."

Another few moments, the silence between them was just long enough to let her doubt creep in.

" _Alright. When my sun rises."_

"Cuando se ven las sombras."

_When the shadows are seen…_

"One more thing for you, Nicolas. Have you learned your lesson in all of this?"

A throaty sigh, then what sounded like a swallow.

"... _Too many lessons...too many."_

After a quiet "adios", the line went dead.

* * *

Eight in the morning.

The sleep he had gotten since the tub had been more of a  _nap_...only four hours...

He had hoped... _thought_ …

... _hoped_  that the hot bath would soothe some of the aches that were plaguing his body, that had been plaguing his body ever since he had taken this bloody job, under  _duress_...well, duress of himself being too distracted by suddenly having Lizzie back in his life, duress of  _not_  wanting to deal with assassination attempts from Suzuki, duress of the thorn in his side that was  _fucking_ Handa, and the duress of being so  _goddamn_  bored.

After coming to the conclusion that it was his body punishing him for swimming in the lava like he always did, he had chosen to dutifully ignore the very obvious signs of physical and mental stress...well, more so than he usually did, anyway.

Normally, he just chalked it up as part of being a criminal, part of doing the jobs he did, flying on the edge of the law, on the edge of death, on the edge of losing everything at any given moment. And normally, he didn't second-guess his choices, because he never had fucking time for that.

But that was  _before_.

When the world barely meant anything anyways, the sky could have turned purple and he probably wouldn't have cared...dinosaurs could have made a sudden reappearance...maybe it could have started raining diamonds...the fucking  _Purge_  might have even happened...rum might have-

 _...no_ , he would have noticed that even if he was dying from the plague, being possessed by Satan, and... _well_.

 _Now_ , he noticed when the temperature changed outside, noticed weather patterns, noticed how  _fucking_  nice his cars were, actually scrolled through the news on his phone...at least until he had about all he could handle of it…he noticed the most mundane shit like they were all winning lottery tickets.

He had seen things before, the world, people, stuff,  _things_...but he hadn't really  _seen_ , in the way that mattered...with appreciation, with the thought of 'oh, I actually enjoy being alive again, imagine that'...

How  _fucking_ dark...

Then again, everything in his life was a little dark since... _forever_. A father that could barely be called a human being...losing his mother, running straight into his fate of being a pirate by actually trying to do the right thing and losing his ship...then going  _full retard_  (a quote he joyfully applied to many things in his past since seeing Tropic Thunder) and making a deal with Sea Satan to raise his ship...then going full retard  _again_  by giving up the heading to Isla de Muerta only to be marooned on an island that he'd been resigned to dying on...losing his ship a-fucking-again (it still kind of pissed him off)...

Better stop now before he ended up falling asleep on the damn table thinking of all the shit he had done and seen since then…

The point was that this job was quickly becoming something far more sinister...a  _war._

_And something told him that he would've been declared as an enemy whether he had taken the job or not…_

_..._ at least,  _eventually_.

Fate had a funny way of making him involved in shit that he wanted no part of…

Thank fuck for the fact that he knew a thing or two about wars, about  _playing the game_...both because he had been involved in several wars, and because he fancied himself a historical expert on global conflict.

However, the current climate of the war was absolutely not to his liking...he would have preferred getting death threats over the silence...the  _not knowing_...and as he sat there breathing in the dewy scent of the air coming from the open window, coupled with the soothing soft light of the English morning, and the birds chirping outside...something became very clear to him.

His fucking shoulder  _killed._

It probably didn't help that he was hunched over glaring into his steaming mug of untouched coffee, wishing that the answer to all of his problems would come climbing out to wave at him. Though he rather thought that  _problems_  were a paltry description of…

 _Nevermind_  swimming in lava, he was perched right at the top of an active goddamn volcano.

But what other person had four people willingly perched there with him, prepared to get blown into the fucking stratosphere as volcanic ash, coming back down to the ground slowly, drowning out sunlight in the process?

 _No one_ , that's who.

And he had a nice ass fucking house, a lot of nice cars, all the alcohol he could ever need…

Not that any of that was going to mean shit if anything went dramatically south in the next few days…

He would be damned twice and sentenced to life in Hell, the Locker, and whatever other doom existed before he let any of them get hurt.

And what the fuck had he made this coffee for if he wasn't going to drink it?

Maybe something was  _missing_...he gazed around his kitchen mural, hoping that  _Zeus_  could float out of the wall and give him some advice…

A ghost of warmth floated across his neck... _strange_...also strange that a voice was evidently attached to it, a sweet husky-from-sleep feminine voice, coming from a lovely mouth attached to a beautiful angel, the one that was currently kissing her way up his neck to arrive at his ear.

"Why are you up early?"

_Because I'm an insufferable insomniac Lizzie, you know this._

"Woke up, couldn't get back to sleep, so I came in here and made this mug of coffee that I haven't even touched yet."

"Mmm." Her teeth sunk into his earlobe with a little nibble before the comforting warmth of her presence suddenly vanished, and his eyes followed her as she crossed the room to his stash of alcohol...his brain caught up with what she was doing a second before she extracted his bottle of Captain Morgan.

"Are you sure you're actually Jack Sparrow? I find it  _very_  difficult to believe that you would forget that you like a shot of rum in your coffee."

_Of course. Obviously. Obviously I am Jack Sparrow, obviously I like rum in my coffee, and I definitely, completely, entirely forgot._

"Ahh, that's why I have you around, to make sure that I get all of the rum I need."

And to turn his heart into a mushy mess, his brain into a state of dumb that only allowed him to think about her...when all of his power of focus wasn't being sent by his brain  _elsewhere_...and only she had the ability to make him feel  _okay_  about everything.

He watched the amber liquid stream out of the bottle into the mug appreciatively, leaning forward to place a soft kiss on the hand holding it, the hand that could calm him down even if he was stuck in a blind rage, the hand that could bring him such pleasure…

...and the hand that lovingly flicked him off once in awhile. That always made him laugh at her.

"Besides, maybe that lovely bath addled my brain."

That got a laugh out of her as she sat down in the chair to his right, scooting it closer to him.

"There are many things that addle your brain, love, but  _water_  has never been one of them."

Stupidity, non-alcoholic beer (what the fuck's the point), slow cars, slow  _drivers_ , a  _lack_  of alcohol (though having it now required a proper time and place)...he noticed her eyes surveying him with that knowing look...that look of 'something is wrong and you're not telling me', and he sighed, already resigned to revealing the thing that she would eventually figure out anyways.

"My shoulder... _well_ , it's my back, really. It hurts."

The rum swished in the bottle, the now glowing kitchen light illuminating it as she brought it to her lips to take a swig. "And how long has this been going on?"

He really did bloody love her and her ability to see right through him. It helped with the torturous process of  _explaining_ things he didn't really want to explain. "Don't know, awhile."

With a short sigh and a small smile that just quirked up the corner of her mouth, her hands dove under his gray long-sleeved shirt and dragged until it was bunched up at his neck, exposing his entire back, skin and tattoo.

"Where at?"

Succeeded by her lips skittering across his skin, almost like she was carving out her own line of words in the poem.

"Just in the middle of my shoulder blade, on the right."

She arranged her chair so that it was behind him, arranged him so that his chair was facing the other way, leaving his back exposed, and then planted her legs on either side of him, and then her fingers got to work. The immediate pleasure entirely stole his ability to curb his reactions, a long groan making its way out of his mouth.

"How do you always know…"

There was a smile on her face behind him, he knew it, could practically feel it. "Because I love you."

Rum, life, and  _Lizzie_. Eternal life.

Only made worth something  _because_  he had Lizzie.

What more could he need?

A surefire way to fuck it all up, apparently.

"Mmm, well then remind me to-oh my  _god_ -to... _to_...what was I saying?"

"Pretty sure you were talking about how you are going to make staying here just as fun as Lima would've been."

Oh.  _That_. They had decided upon exiting the bath that it was in their best interests to stay here. Logically, it made sense to flee the kitchen if there was a squealing smoke alarm, a stove on fire, and a collapsing ceiling…

But now they had  _stakes_ , things to lose, things to worry about, things that might not survive impulsive decisions, like  _leaving_.

"You sound like you doubt me."

"And you sound like you are preparing to disappoint me."

Not  _quite_.

"We  _do_  have a bed. And a shower. And a couch. And a table," and then he realized he was counting off on his fingers as he said each. Six more fingers to go. "We have cars, chairs, countertops, a  _pool_ , the floor, and plenty of walls."

She leaned forward again to kiss his head. "Why is it always sex that you use to pretend like something isn't bothering you?"

The words "nothing is bothering me" tried their mightiest to be uttered, but it was not to be. There was no pretending with her. Never had been. The second she had demanded to know the true story of the island, a million years ago, he had crumbled like a poorly constructed sand castle.

' _Last time…last time I was here a grand total of three days, alright?'_

' _That's the grand adventure of the infamous Jack Sparrow? You spent three days, lying on a beach, drinking rum.'_

"Who says I was pretending...maybe  _you're_  pretending."

Her fingers gave one last rub before she tugged his shirt back down, keeping her hands under it. "Right. You should call Suzuki at some point. Make sure she made it out of the U.K."

"I will tomorrow morning."

 _Not_  that he necessarily cared about Suzuki, he certainly didn't wish her dead, but beyond that...the thing that had been recently nagging at him since last night, that had been swimming in and out of his thoughts, a blood-starved thought vampire...there was a little girl at stake now…

A little girl that already saw enough shit being buried in the bowels of a drug cartel, now she had been drug into something that a child had no place being in...thrown around like a bargaining chip, like an item...a  _commodity_.

He feared for her, but he couldn't place why.

"Surprised you care."

"I don't. I care about the little girl-"

"Me too, love."

The rum coffee was still hot when he brought the mug to his lips, taking a good long swallow.

 _Me too_.

Her arms tightened around him, pulling his body closer to her in a hug.

Just then the other three walked in from the hallway like a strange version of the Three Musketeers.

"Morning," he and Lizzie said at the same time, half paying attention to the direction they went into the kitchen. Shawn to the pot of coffee, Chris to the fridge, and Ringa to the alcohol cupboard. Tequila, probably.

They responded back with "morning" at different times, and they all sounded like death. Chris turned around and peered at the position they were in.

"Did we interrupt something?"

_Yes, Chris. I was going to lay Lizzie on the table in just a few moments, damn your timing._

"She was trying to fix my shoulder."

"And her hands got lost?"

"This is  _my_  house. If you don't like what I do in my house-"

"Fuck you."

"Fuck you too. I sign your paychecks."

"Jack, you fucking pay me in cash."

Lizzie was giggling at their antics behind him. Of course she would find it funny. It was good that any of them could still find things funny, he supposed.

The chair at the other end of the table was pulled out, Ringa sinking into it with a tumbler of tequila. "Chris filled me in on the drama from last night. Muy jodido."

 _Pretty fucked_  was right. He had not expected Suzuki to run her mouth, and he had not expected to be exposed to a Yakuza boss. He might as well run into Parliament waving a shotgun around screaming "fuck the government"...

Or maybe not. He wasn't stupid or crazy. At least, not at the same time, usually.

Lizzie returned her chair to its original position, and he  _almost_  protested at the loss of her hands on his chest.

Chris and Shawn took the other two chairs on the left and right, setting down their coffee and soda. "So, now the Yakuza know your name. This person...Izumi…"

But Chris trailed off when he didn't have anything to actually describe the man. None of them did.

"Yeah, and it makes me about as uncomfortable as losing several poisonous snakes in my house."

"And he thinks you have the evidence?"

 _Maybe_. No. Possibly.

It depended on whether he had bought Suzuki's lies. And with no measure of the man's intelligence, the fact that he had managed to capture Suzuki at all notwithstanding, he couldn't settle on an answer.

"I think for now we should  _assume_  that he thinks that. Prepare for the worst."

"We have already started preparing," Lizzie continued for him. "We're not going to Lima. As much protection as you would have in this house, both from artillery and the fact that no one knows where it is, we don't think leaving is the best option at the moment."

The can of soda made a hissing noise when Chris popped it open, before glancing up at Lizzie. "With the way things are going, I am not entirely sure that you would be safe even if you  _did_  go to Lima."

He wished he knew if that were true, but he just... _didn't_. Hated not knowing his enemy, hated being so blind.

In his pirating days, back when the world wasn't so  _damn_  complex, it was fine if they came upon an unfamiliar enemy ship, because the variety of tactics that could be used against him was a short list. But  _now_ , everyone had the entire world at their disposal, the ways of communicating had advanced, everything had so many  _layers_ , overlaps, connections…

For all he knew, Izumi already knew that he had booked a damn plane ticket to Lima.

 _Fuck_  Suzuki.

"Either you're considering murdering your coffee mug, or you're still pissed about Suzuki," Chris said, amused.

Of course he was still pissed about her. The one thing that they had needed to manage was keeping their involvement in the evidence theft unknown. And they would have been just fine if Suzuki had told him the fucking truth in the first place.

"She fucked us over. Bad."

Chris nodded, but he nodded in that 'I only half agree with you' way.

"What?"

"I mean, she  _did_ lie about Lizzie. You have to give her some credit."

"Doesn't change the fact that if she had told me that a little girl was dependent on the job, I might have suggested doing things a little differently. A little more quietly. Might have taken longer, might have had more risk in different areas, but it would have kept the Yakuza from learning that we were involved."

Under the table, warm fingers curled around his own, stroking softly. "We can't really change what already happened, so there is no point in ruminating about it. All we can do is try and plan for whatever the fuck we are going to face next."

"See, at least Lizzie is  _pretending_  to not hate her."

He almost laughed at the look she sent Chris just before Shawn piped up. "Kind of fucked that people throw children around like that, like they are just objects. Kind of fucked that children are in that kind of environment at all."

Shawn had seen some shit involving kids, he knew. Kids that were living on the street, kids that jumped from house to house because their own house was too unsafe to be in. Kids hooked on drugs, kids selling drugs, kids selling guns...the world wasn't kind to anyone.

Then again, it never really had been. Cavemen had to learn the hard way which berries were poisonous and which weren't. Then they realized eventually that other humans could be dickheads, and that they could be dickheads in return, creating war. Basically one fuck up after another ever since the discovery that rubbing sticks and flint together made fire.

"Yeah, it is. I was telling Lizzie just before you guys came blundering in here that I was worried about...what did Suzuki say her name was?"

"Gabriella," came Ringa from across the table. "Pretty name."

"She shouldn't be involved in all of this shit," he said to no one in particular.

"Her parents," Shawn started with a tinge of aggression in his voice, "are the ones continuing to keep her there."

"Didn't Suzuki say that the reason the Cartel took her in the first place was that the father tried to leave?" Lizzie asked.

"Yeah, I guess. Still, sounds like her parents have strange priorities."

"Cartels can have a toxic effect on everything they come into contact with," Ringa said. "They make the people dependent on them, brainwash them...the Cartel life is so integrated sometimes that it is almost impossible to break free."

The Yakuza was no different.

He watched Ringa finish off her tequila. "We are going to have to keep an eye on the news. The Trivoly woman isn't going to just disappear if we ignore her."

"Going to be kind of hard to defend against law enforcement if they manage to do their jobs correctly for once. Not a great track record, considering the three major security breaches they had not too long ago," Lizzie said as she took a sip of his rum coffee.

Tower of London, Bank of England,  _and_ fucking Pentonville Prison. He was still side-eyeing the competency of Scot- _New_  Scotland Yard after that shitstorm.

"Trivoly seems to be a competent detective, but she also seems like she enjoys the chase more than she enjoys doing things by the books. I think things could get interesting with her."

"And what about Izumi? I realize that there isn't much we can do until...until he  _does_  something, but we can't just sit here and wait."

He studied Chris's face for a moment, coming to the same conclusion, and the same solution, that he had arrived at while in his own headspace in the tub.

"I'm not sure I could handle just sitting here and waiting anyway. We need information, from  _them_."

"... _Yeah_ , I was afraid you would say that."

"He's got a couple of goons, henchman, foot soldiers, whatever you want to call them, here with him. If Lizzie and I can corner one of them, alone, we might be able to shake some intelligence loose. Get a better picture of the situation."

"Is that our only option?" Shawn asked

Better than sitting here doing  _nothing_. At least this way, they would have some balls in their court.

Lizzie had her head tilted at him. "Shawn, I don't think Jack would seriously suggest the kidnap and interrogation of a Yakuza member if there  _were_ any other options."

Time to move the first pawn across the chessboard.

"We'll do it tonight when it gets dark. Think Lizzie and I will probably take a short nap at some point. Didn't get much sleep."

"What about Handa?" Chris asked. "Can't see him suddenly thinking of you as his best friend."

 _Handa_ , that psychopathic rich disgusting shit mouth. Out of all the people he had fantasized about killing, Handa made it to the top of the fucking list as far as frequency and use of violent force went. Nail beds, wood chippers, long gruesome torture, vats of acid, running him over with all of his cars...

"I will  _remind_  Suzuki of that problem when I call her tomorrow morning. She and I will have  _words_  if she chooses to back out on that arrangement."

"Hopefully she has enough brains left to realize that fucking you over  _again_  is not in her best interests."

He chose not to mention that it would be the  _third_  time, technically, with that stunt she pulled just before she walked out the door.

"Chris, why don't you and Ringa flick through the news, see if you can pick up anything. Lizzie and I will try and come up with a plan, take a look at the city map. Shawn, I want you to go through the house and make sure that all the firearms are where they need to be, loaded, and ready to go."

They dispersed after agreeing, leaving him and Lizzie there alone.

"So, you realize that I hate this idea too, right?"

"I don't like it any more than you do. But we'll be cautious, obviously...we'll abandon the idea if I even get a hint that it might turn sour."

He knew, and she knew, that sometimes in war, you had to make moves to learn, to advance.

Do nothing, and eventually, the enemy will make the move that you should have made.

* * *

The drive back to London was quiet...there was the sound of the motorway, with all of its bumps and cracks, the noise of the tires against the road...the car she had... _borrowed_  from Izumi was loose in the door, so a small amount of wind whistled through as she drove, but she had stopped noticing it eighty miles into the trip…

 _Focus_ , it was all she could think, and it consumed her, made her read every single street sign that she passed, memorizing the route, kept her on the lookout for anything suspicious... _focus_ , because in the chaos it was all she could rely on at this point. Not many police cars were out and about...she had seen a few, but it gave her a sense of security...even though in her experience, law enforcement weren't reliable across the board. If they were, her job would be a lot more complicated.

Not that she couldn't handle it, but she would prefer not  _having to_  handle it.

It made her think of her place in all of this, what had led her here, the significance of these events...because really, in the grand scheme of things, it was just another power play in the world of the Cartel that had involved the wrong choice of challengers...a wildcard in Jack...the antagonist in Izumi, the distant force in the Russians, and the  _good guys_...the cops…all wrapped up in a neat criminal network that involved far more than just trafficking.

That  _Trivoly_  woman...she hadn't seemed exactly stupid from the small bit of news coverage she had managed to catch in her hotel room. Izumi wasn't stupid either, but he was driven by self-interest...wanting to clear his name… _wanting power_...

She just hoped that Jack was smart enough to keep quiet unless his hand was forced. Izumi may want him dead, but Izumi had also never dealt with Jack before in any capacity, and a defensive Jack was like trying to break into Alcatraz.  _Next to impossible._

It was by some grace that surely lived on a very thin string that she was allowed to step out of the ring...to take leave of the battlefield...she had only one task left. Deliver Gabriella to her parents. Then she was done.

At least,  _with Arturo_ , anyway. There was still the problem of Handa, which she intended to clear up as soon as possible. That little fucker had been allowed the privilege of being alive for far longer than he deserved. His time was up.

She passed the sign for London at 9:56 A.M., and finally allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief. Nearly there.

 _McDonald's_...disgusting...a bunch of random shops...the tall skyscrapers could be seen in the distance...and of course, the traffic was just starting to turn into a clusterfuck. Thankfully she had gotten an early enough start.

The petrol station was just on the edge of the airport complex, and when she turned in, she saw two black SUV's that were already parked around to the side. She drove around the pumps and parked her car on the edge of the curb, looking around her to make sure there was nothing out of place.

Finding everything to be... _normal_ , she climbed out of the car, making sure that her .45 was tucked into the back of her pants. In front of her was the ugly generic visage of the station, and out of the corner of her eye, she spied Arturo climbing out of the back of the SUV, dressed in a suit for once in his life.

With a few steps, he reached her, stopping to extract a cigar from some pocket in his suit jacket. His pasty lips wrapped around it once it was lit, taking a long drag, and then blowing the smoke out like it was an important thing to do.

By the time he reached her, the cigar was burned down an inch.

Hopefully, this conversation would be over before it was gone.

"Hola-"

"- _Where's Gabriella_?"

His lips wrapped around the cigar and froze there as he regarded her cooly.

"In a hurry?"

Eyeing the smoke around him with distaste, she peered around him at the second SUV.

"London doesn't suit me."

"Ah, I'm not sure London suits anyone. Little Gabriella is waiting for you just behind me," he paused to wave his hand in that direction, "but I feel like we should cover any loose ends first."

"Loose ends?" she asked with a tight face and a clipped voice.

"Si, make sure I know what you know, and vice-versa."

"Jack did what he was hired to do, I did what I was hired to do, you have your evidence, you can shake the Yakuza off your back, Nicolas and Rosalina can have their daughter back, and the fallout was minimal. What else is there to know?"

For a second she thought he was staring behind her, but then he pointed his finger at her neck. "What are the bruises from?"

 _Damn_. Too fucking late to play dumb now.

"Izumi...interrogated me. And before you run your mouth, I didn't tell him anything I could get away with keeping a secret."

"But you did tell him...things."

_Of course she did. She had to._

"I told him...that Jack still had the evidence. He doesn't know about this," she twitched a finger back and forth between them, and then swept it in an arc to indicate the station, "and he doesn't know that you already have the box."

"And Gabriella?"

 _She fucking hated Izumi_.

"He...found out about her and Jack through someone else. I am guessing one of yours."

It was a slow nod from him, divided by a few puffs on the cigar. "I am guessing that you are  _correcto_. No matter, with the evidence in our possession, his hands are tied, and once you have Gabriella she is no longer my concern. Jack...he chose to place himself in the line of fire, so if he gets burned, I'm sure I will hear about it on the news. The police seem awfully keen on figuring out who was behind the bomb threat."

"They do."

_He seemed awfully blasé about losing one of his own men…_

"All I am concerned about now is finally destroying that box of trash, and... _Nicolas._  Have you spoken to him?"

"I have. I updated him on the situation."

"Good. I have hopes that this will teach him a lesson or two."

 _He certainly said as much_.

"If not for his sake, for his family's sake."

The sentiment didn't appear to translate to Arturo, but then again, it rarely ever did.

"Can we end this charade now please?"

"Si, si, certainly. I am in a hurry as well."

He turned to motion to the Cartel henchman standing next to the second SUV, who then turned to open the back door.

Gabriella climbed out wearing jeans and a yellow t-shirt with a graphic of Mexico on it. She had that expression on her face...like she was actively learning just by looking at the environment.

It took an obscene amount of time for the pair to walk the short distance towards her, but as soon as Gabriella's hand was within reach, she reached out for it, delicately snatching her away from the man.

" _Gracias_ ," she said, but said it in a way that sounded more like " _get the fuck away from us_ ", and then turned her attention back to Arturo.

"I thank you for coming through on your promises, Suzuki. It is much appreciated."

"De nada. I hope we never meet again."

"Considering your profession, I won't hesitate to agree with you."

_What she wouldn't give to have her next target be him._

* * *

Sometimes she hated when people assumed she was stupid just because she was a kid.

She understood that they were running.

That had been obvious her entire life, always running from place to place, her mother was always making her turn away from things, or go back to the car, or stay in the house...her father was always leaving, saying he  _didn't have time_ , rushing out of the door...leaving her with a sheet of homework in her hand, or a drawing…

But this was the first time that she felt like she was running for no reason.

And this was the first time she really felt like she was running  _away_.

She was supposed to feel like she was going home, like she was running towards something better…

It was scary not being happy to go home.

Is that what her mother and father felt like? Like going home didn't change anything? Like there was always something waiting...a new problem, a bigger problem…

The city was so big, and she felt so small...but she also felt like things could happen here for her...different things... _new things_.

"We're going to the airport. We should be back home by tonight."

It took her a moment to realize that Suzuki had spoken to her, as she had been distracted by everything outside of the window.

"I miss my parents."

Except she said it in such a way that it held no feeling anymore, like it was just  _something she said_ , because she had spent too long missing them already that it had started to feel like it was part of her.

"I know you do."

"I missed you too."

Suzuki didn't say anything to that. It was a few more minutes before she did speak.

"I talked to your father on the phone. He misses you too, so does your mother."

"Are you okay?"

A flash of a look was all she got, a few seconds of eye contact, and then she kept driving.

"Your mother is going to keep you at home-"

"Suzi, I asked you a  _question_."

She hadn't meant to sound so forceful, but everyone around her was always so sad, so tired, and she was  _tired_  of it.

"How I am isn't important. You're safe now, that's all that matters."

"...Oh."

Tried to focus on the approaching airport, tried to distract herself with the street signs and the other cars and anything else she could see, but the only thing that she could think about was that something was  _wrong_.

"Where are you going after we get back?"

"I have some things to take care of."

"Think you could stay long enough to watch Treasure Island with me and-"

"No, B, I don't think so. Maybe next time."

She picked at the car seat, feeling frustrated. She didn't really  _care_  about the movie, or the car, or the airport or anything.

"I guess…"

They passed by the information building three different times, passed by the exit to the motorway three different times, and by the time they made the third round, she was able to recite the slogan on the billboard rising high above the road.

' _More flights to more destinations.'_

Except she doubted that people really went on vacation when they left. They took themselves with after all, and that's what everyone is always really trying to escape.

Finally, they turned into the parking lot.

"Come on, grab your backpack, make sure nothing fell out, and let's go inside. Our flight's soon."

* * *

Her brain felt like a malfunctioning merry-go-round stuck in a fever dream.

And it was only ten in the morning.

Still eight more hours of this shit to go.

Leaning forward towards her black wood coffee table, she tried to wipe the fatigue from her eyes, tried to will her brain to activate genius mode…

... _who the bloody fuck was he_?

Every tangent of thought, every road she went down always came back to that question. The mysterious man on the phone, the caller, the threat, a  _security_  issue, a national problem, a  _thief_ ,  _fuckhead_...she had come up with plenty of names to call him, but she knew the names of the hookers that snuck around at night better than she knew his name.

And she  _hated_  it and  _loved_ it at the same time.

Figuring his identity out wouldn't be such an obsession if she didn't believe him to be the key to the entire thing. He knew about the Cartel's involvement, he knew about the Yakuza, and if he was trusted enough to steal evidence for the Cartel in a multi-crime international case, then he could be a tool for her as well.

She still felt like she was trying to put a puzzle together blindfolded.  _Goddamnit._

Glancing up at the painting she had over her fireplace, a modern art piece of various newspaper clippings, all stories with ambiguous moral messages, she wondered, just for a moment, about the train of thought that she always ended up on in her rare chances of introspection.

When she had been hired on as a detective, it was with five dollars to her name, two sets of outfits, a piece of shit car, and a mission to take down every single criminal she came across.

Back then, to her, the world was easy,  _simple_ , good people stood on one side of the court, and bad people stood on the other.

Bad people did drugs, robbed grocery stores, gas stations, bad people had guns and weapons, they didn't care about civilians, they were criminals just to be criminals, they deserved what they got…

Bad people.

 _Bad people_.

Such a thing didn't exist, she had figured out.

Good people didn't exist either.

 _People_ existed.

Just people.

And people were never completely good, or completely bad, they were on a spectrum, they tread on shades of gray, some darker than others, some walking back and forth, some wishing they could be a lighter color…

The bottom line, the end of the rope...the thing that most people had such a hard time accepting, was that  _anyone_  could rob a grocery store,  _anyone_  could start using drugs, anyone could become a criminal...all it takes is the right string of events, a bad day…

A human is nothing but an amalgamation of their experiences, and how they have translated all of the information they have taken in...into a kind of code, a framework with which they learn how to operate within the world, and that framework can shift and change and warp…

 _Fuck_.

Her temples ached, her eyes ached, her head felt like it weighed a million pounds, because she  _knew_  that no matter how many times she tried to tell herself that her only job was to catch the bad guy, to clean the streets up, to be the  _protector_...all she could think about was getting into their world...into the dark side, the wild side, to understand why they did what they did, what led them there, what went on in their heads... _how they saw the world from their place in it, how they managed to make sense of everything_ …

And this... _man_...this... _person_ …

 _Not even fucking sure why he is so fascinating...all he's done is stage a bomb threat and steal a box_...but it was his presence, his…

 _Fuck_.

Suddenly, out of the blue, her phone started screaming at her.

Bouncing back and forth about six times between ignoring the call and answering it, she finally swiped to the right and lifted the phone to her ear.

" _Hello?_ "

"Morning, Monica. You sound tired, so I won't keep you too long."

"Oh, hello Jasper. No, well, I am tired, but it's just this case I'm on...feels like I've stumbled into the ass end of a... _nevermind_ , it's just complicated. Really complicated."

Jasper Kingsgrove...a professor at Oxford that through a strange sequence of events involving a previous case, a small scandal, and a few drinks had become a good friend. He had a doctorate in world history and a masters in historical art, with a side hobby of linguistics.

"Don't want to tell me about it?"

"No, it would take days to even manage to make sense of it to you, and  _I can't_."

"Of course, just trying to make conversation."

"Sure."

"Anyway, I called you to tell you that we have a painting exhibit coming in sometime soon at the BM. Not sure exactly when, but within the next month or so. Quite a few historical paintings, some that are entirely new discoveries."

"You mean like they weren't trying to find them, but just stumbled upon them?"

"Exactly, there is one I thought you would like in particular, but I don't want to spoil it, so I'll wait until you see it."

"Can't wait. Keep me updated."

He hung up after a mumbled, "gotta go, students".

Paintings were a sort of side hobby of hers, though she would have a better chance of explaining just about  _anything_ else than she would explaining why she liked paintings.

She just did.

But paintings were the least of her worries right now. Cyril had warned her about the ongoing and growing problem that had plagued her ever since the bomb threat…

 _The press_.

They were going to be waiting outside the Yard, and she really didn't have the patience today to have microphones shoved in her face with ten people screaming about whether ISIS was behind the bomb threat, or whether there were connections to fuckall knows what…

She thought it should be illegal for them to swarm like that.

Rising to her feet, she grabbed her phone, buttoned her suit jacket, snatched her keys off of the coffee table, and paused to prepare at  _least something_  to tell the fucking reporters.

_No, we haven't found the persons or person responsible for the security threat...No, we don't know the impact the loss of evidence will have on the case...No, we don't have any new suspects...Yes, we believe this is connected to the sex trafficking international case...fuck off, fuck you, go drown yourself in the fucking Thames, shove that microphone up-_

_Well, maybe not those things._

And she had to do another briefing with Cyril, go over the minute new details they  _did_  have...by the time they had something substantial, she was going to be reciting all of the facts she knew in her damn sleep.

Mysterious man, likes cars, likes to make scary phone calls, inserted himself into a war between the Cartel and the Yakuza, stole evidence for the Cartel for some fucking reason...and likes to disappear off the face of the fucking earth leaving her to worry about the entire goddamn case falling apart.

The Russian angle, the Cartel angle, the Yakuza angle, everything crisscrossed and overlapped and it was so goddamn insidious, so toxic…

Wrenching open her front door, she stepped into the  _outside_  so quickly that a blast of wind made her eyes water.

_Time to head into the piranha frenzy._

 

* * *

 

The brakes squeaked when she stopped in the parking space, making her remind herself for the hundredth time to get them checked.

And for the hundredth time, she told herself she would do it tomorrow.

When she caught a glimpse of the black blob twitching and moving back and forth by the entrance to the Yard, procrastination suddenly didn't seem like such a good idea.

Steeling herself,  _really, it was never going to change so just get it over with and get inside_ , she gripped the door handle and pushed it open, pausing to push the door lock button on her keys.

 _Thank fuck for flat boots_. They would notice her a little later than they would if she was wearing heels. Otherwise known as monstrosities.

But notice her they did. One of the blonde ones snapped her head in her direction like a triggered robot, the rest of them mirroring the action in a wave... _Jesus fuck they're like a hive mind…_

 _And here they come_.

The first question rocketed out of the blonde's mouth before she even had the microphone to her lips.

" _Detective Trivoly, can you tell us the status of the suspect search in the bomb threat?"_

The first one always opened the floodgates. After that, she immediately hated the English language so much that she wanted to become deaf.

" _What is the status of the case? Is it still international?"_

" _How can the citizens of London feel like they are safe? What is the police department doing to ensure their safety?"_

" _There are rumors that they are considering replacing you. How do you respond?"_

" _Some people suggest that the bomb threat was an inside job. Any comment?"_

" _When will the next press conference be?"_

" _Any word on the evidence that was stolen?"_

' _What impact will that ha-"_

Finally, she spun on the spot and held her hand up like it alone could bestow instance silence.

And miraculously it did.

"We are working diligently on the international aspects of the case, and we hope to find new information soon. We are doing everything we can to ensure the safety of this city and are keeping a close eye on further evidence of security threats in the future. Details about the case and suspects are to remain confidential until further notice. No further comments."

Like vultures not quite done picking at their carcas, they exploded into more noise, none of the questions discernible with the way they were screaming over each other.

Finally, after what seemed like a longer time than waiting in traffic, she made it through the door into the building, where they were mercifully not allowed.

"Morning Chief Inspector."

"Morning Rilkes. Is Chamberlain in?"

"Yeah, he's waiting for you in your office. He-"

But she was already heading away from him, eager to get absolutely nowhere again with the case. Just like Cyril was apparently getting nowhere with sleep. At least last night. His eyes were fixed on the middle of her desk and looked like they had been for some time.

"Are you contemplating how to achieve world peace?"

A quiet distracted "maybe" was mumbled out, but she doubted that he even knew what he was saying maybe to.

"For once I think I got more sleep than you did."

His eyes twitched to a spot just to the right of where he had been staring before catching her gaze. "They're turning up the pressure on me to put this case away. The UN has really prioritized the trafficking problem, and they have focused on this one especially…"

"Maybe they could help out and try and figure out why the Cartel killed that prosecutor...if Ramos even did. And if he  _didn't_ , it would sure help to know who is responsible."

"Or they could just sit on their asses and wait for us to hand solutions to them. Oh...they're already doing that."

"The bigger paycheck means doing less work…"

"...I guess."

She circled around after a short sigh and sat in her chair. "Pretty soon you're just going to have to move your desk in here. So, let's go over again what we  _think_  we know."

"Cartel killed prosecutor, but it is possibly a frame job, so maybe someone else killed the prosecutor, but the Cartel still probably hired Thief Man to steal the evidence, so they are involved one way or another...Thief Man has more questions surrounding him than the activities of the U.S. government...whoever killed the prosecutor was trying to protect themselves...but maybe they fucked up and didn't do it right...we don't know where or who Thief Man is...the Yakuza and the Cartel may or may not be here, and this is just a really giant clusterfuck."

For a moment she just stared at him, tilted her head, kept staring…

"... _Thief man_?"

"What the fuck else are we supposed to call him? Telephone man? Criminal man?"

"...Maybe just  _the suspect_. I would hate to hear you accidentally call him  _thief man_  on national television…"

Couldn't even imagine the man's reaction to  _that_.

"Well, the suspect might as well be a nobody at this point. Are we sure he ever existed at all?"

"I can bloody recite his phone call from memory."

"Right."

"I think all we can truly do right now is  _watch_. We've still got people on alert at the airport, we have alerted all of the surrounding police departments...something always breaks eventually."

"You had just better hope it isn't us. No word on the location of the evidence?"

Yeah, vacationing somewhere in Mexico by now, probably.

"No. As far as we are aware, it is no longer attainable.  _Thief man_  is apparently quite good at his job."

"We skipped the last opportunity to do a press conference. Think we should do one now?"

"Maybe. We can release a few details about the suspect, at least what we have hypothesized him to be. Maybe we can play his phone call. And we can suggest we are focusing our efforts on London. Might make something happen at the primary interest points. Airport, for example."

She was reminded of the man's  _Jenga_  comment. At the moment, this entire case was a perfect tower of Jenga blocks, and either one could be removed, sending everything straight to hell, or one could be removed and leave the rest still intact.

"Sounds good. I'll write up the statement in a little bit. What about the run through tomorrow?"

The run-through with the government agents assigned to oversee them.

It was the third time that they were going to go over everything they had on the Russian-Japanese trafficking ring, except this time they had to add all of the new developments in about the Cartel and  _thief man_.

"We have everything prepared."

"Good."

"Yeah."

Run-throughs were worse than licking hot sauce off of Satan's asshole.

"I'll send the necessary notices to the media, about what they can and cannot print from the conference. Let's say...half past twelve?"

"Sounds good to me."

Half of the media were already here practically having an orgy on the front steps.

She watched him get up from the chair and head out in the direction of the lobby and then turned to gaze out her window.

_Where are you, and what do you know?_


End file.
